Amnesty International’s Position on Navalny Is Unconscionable

No matter what the organization says, Alexei Navalny is indeed a prisoner of conscience in Putin’s Russia.

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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny inside a defendant dock during the announcement of a court verdict in Moscow, February 2, 2021

Press Service of Simonovsky District Court / Handout via Reuters

Amnesty International has stripped jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny of his “prisoner of conscience” status after the organization was “bombarded” with complaints highlighting some of his unseemly rhetoric from the past.

Navalny was nearly murdered by a nerve-agent attack last year, almost surely perpetrated by the Putin regime. His life was saved only after he was airlifted to Germany. Determined to return to Russia, Navalny flew back in January, at the same time releasing an investigation into the opulent lifestyles of Putin and other corrupt Russian oligarchs. Navalny was promptly arrested for violating the terms of his parole on an earlier sentence (for a trumped-up embezzlement conviction) by not checking in with a parole officer — from his German hospital bed, where he spent weeks in a coma. Initially held in a Moscow prison, he was recently moved to what is reportedly a “penal colony.”

David Harsanyi

About the Author

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner.

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