Imprisoned Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny says prison authorities have informed him that they have decided to revoke his right to attorney-client privilege because he continues to commit crimes from prison.
The authorities told him he has “communicated with accomplices” through lawyers and they are therefore abolishing the attorney-client privilege, Navalny said on Twitter on September 8.
Navalny -- who is serving two sentences about 260 kilometers east of Moscow on charges of violating parole and embezzlement that are widely seen as being fabricated. -- said that prison authorities took him out of his cell to inform him of the decision.
They accused him of continuing his criminal activity “directly from the prison facilities,” he tweeted.
Navalny added that, when he asked what “extremist crimes” he has committed from prison, he was told: “This is secret information, you are not allowed to know it, we will not give you the inspection materials. All you need to know is that the attorney-client privilege no longer applies to you.”
They also informed him that employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service will now read all the documents exchanged between him and his lawyer and it will take three days for communications from one side to reach the other, he said.
He said the slot used to transfer documents to his lawyers has been nailed shut and in-person meetings with his lawyer will take place through a double pane of Plexiglas with bars inside.
“Our communication is now more like a pantomime, to be honest,” he said.
Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service did not immediately reply to a request for comment, Reuters said.
Navalny was arrested in January last year upon his return to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack in Siberia in 2020 with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent.
Navalny, Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, has blamed the Russian president for the poison attack, a charge that the Kremlin has denied.
He has recently complained about being sent to solitary confinement, saying that prison authorities have used the tactic because of political activities that his associates continue from abroad and because he established a labor union in the penal colony.
