The former chief of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's office in the city of Ufa in Bashkortostan has been handed final indictment papers and may face up to 18 years in prison if convicted on charges of extremism and taking part in an extremist organization's activities.
Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov wrote on Telegram on September 20 that the probe against Lilia Chanysheva has finished and her lawyers have started studying the case's materials.
Chanysheva, 40, was arrested in Ufa in November and later transferred to a detention center in Moscow.
She headed the local unit of Navalny's network of regional campaign groups until his team disbanded them after a Moscow prosecutor went to court to have them branded "extremist."
The court accepted the prosecutor's request, effectively outlawing the group.
Chanysheva's defense team said at the time that her arrest was the first since the movement was banned. The charges appear to be retroactive since the organization she worked for disbanded before it had been legally classified as extremist.
In January, Amnesty International urged Russian authorities to release Chanysheva "immediately," insisting the extremism charges are absurd and should be dropped.
Navalny himself has been in prison since February last year, while several of his associates have been charged with establishing an extremist group. Many of his associates have fled the country.
Several former activists who worked for Navalny's groups have fled the country shortly before and after Chanysheva's arrest.
