MOSCOW: A Russian military court on Monday upheld a decision by state investigators not to open criminal investigations into the poisoning of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and rejected a legal appeal by his allies, one of his legal team said.
Navalny, 44, fell ill on a flight in Siberia in August and was airlifted to Germany, where doctors concluded he had been poisoned with a nerve agent. The Kremlin has denied any role in his illness and said it has seen no proof he was poisoned.
After recovering in Germany and returning to Russia, Navalny, President Vladimir Putin‘s most prominent critic, was jailed last month for around two and a half years over parole violations he called trumped up.
His allies had asked Russian law enforcement authorities to open criminal cases into his poisoning and had filed a legal complaint against what they said was the authorities’ unacceptable inaction.
But a Moscow military court on Monday rejected their appeal, Vyacheslav Gimadi, the head of the legal department at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said on Twitter as did the Navalny Team’s official Twitter account.
The court ruled that state investigators’ refusal to look into the matter formally, a decision they said was justified by what they said was a lack of evidence that a crime had taken place, was lawful, Russian news agencies reported.
Navalny’s team said it planned to appeal the ruling.