After 20 days missing, Alexei Nalvany participated in the first court hearing in the Arctic, in which he took the opportunity to skewer the Kremlin.
After being missing for 20 days, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny participated on Wednesday in his first appearance in the Russian court, by video call, since being transferred.
At the meeting, he joked about the situation and drew laughter from the judge when he asked if Melekhovo, where he was previously detained, had held a party to celebrate his departure and if it included karaoke and nudism.
Navalny's questioning is something of a jab at Russian President Vladimir Putin after a party with scantily clad celebrities sparked a nationwide scandal last month in Moscow .
The 47-year-old, who is serving sentences totaling more than three decades, uses the hearings to criticize Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. At the session, he confided to Judge Kirill Nikiforov that he was thrilled to see him again, saying, "A tear runs down my cheek."
Poisoned by Russian intelligence agents in 2020, who applied the nerve substance Novichok to his underwear, Nalavany denies the accusations and claims that he is a victim of persecution and silencing. The Polar Wolves colony is located almost 2,000 kilometers from Moscow and is considered one of the toughest in Russia. Navalny took advantage of the space at Wednesday's hearing to denounce that prison authorities allegedly sent him to an isolation cell for calling an inspector a "demon" , "idiot" and "straw man" in October, according to a Reuters report, but acknowledged that he had overreacted to the criticism. He said he had his pens confiscated, preventing him from communicating.
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