Navalny was charged with disturbing public order and resisting arrest during a demonstration on Feb. 24. He was also charged with violating a travel ban stemming from a pending criminal case in which he is accused of defrauding a local cosmetics producer. Police say he violated the ban when he traveled to the suburbs of Moscow in early January.
The New York Times reports that Judge Artur Karpov told Navalny during the hearing “it’s a travel ban… it means you couldn’t go where you were not given express permission.”
Navalny has used social media platforms as well as his blog (which is read by 2 million people per month) to organize rallies and demonstrations against the Kremlin, as well as publishing and denouncing corrupt practices.
The latest of his criticisms involved the alleged embezzlement of ‘billions of dollars’ in the preparations for the Sochi Winter Olympics. Observers say that with the Games over, the Russian government is less concerned with its public image worldwide.
“It is easy to see that with the Olympics over, there’s no need to put up a kind face for anyone anymore,” Sergei Nikitin, the head of the Russian branch of Amnesty International, told the New York Times on Friday. “We are all witnesses to Russia’s growing pressure on any kind of independent opinion.”
Navalany said in court: “Their only goal is to stop my political activities, they want to stop me from coordinating our anticorruption investigations.”
Although his colleagues have been banned from communicating with him, Navalany’s anticorruption organization will continue working and posting on social media, said aide Anna Veduta outside the courthouse.
