European Court Finds Russia's Treatment of Alexei Navalny 'Inhuman'

Europe's top human rights court ruled Tuesday that Russia subjected opposition activist Alexi Navalny to "inhuman treatment" following his arrest in 2021, three years before his death at an Arctic prison. Navalny, a prominent anti-corruption campaigner and critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from a 2020 Novichok nerve agent poisoning while campaigning in Siberia. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said Navalny's jailing was illegal and based on the "activation of a suspended sentence" stemming from a 2014 fraud and money laundering conviction that the court had previously found to be unlawful. In its ruling, the ECHR said the activist was "simultaneously subjected to a combination of several forms of ill-treatment," which "reflected a pattern of disregard for his health, well-being and dignity and amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment." While at one prison, the court said, Navalny had his head shaved, he "was kept under constant video surveillance, and deprived of sleep through hourly or two-hourly security checks."