(Reuters) -Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday that he is being investigated on terrorism charges that could see him sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In comments published on Twitter by Navalny aides, the Kremlin critic, who is already serving sentences totalling eleven and a half years on charges including fraud, said: “They have presented absurd allegations that threaten me with 30 years in prison … that I, while in prison, commit terrorist acts.”
Navalny was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020 with what Western laboratories established was a nerve agent. The Kremlin denied trying to kill him. He was jailed the following year when he returned to Russia after receiving medical treatment in Germany.
His campaigning organisations have been banned in Russia as “extremist”. This month Russian investigators formally linked Navalny supporters to the murder of Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger and supporter of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, who was killed by a bomb in St Petersburg. Navalny allies have denied any connection to the killing.
Separately on Wednesday, Russian investigators said that 11 people have been put on an “international wanted list” in a case linked to Navalny, state-owned news agency TASS reported.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
