A court in Moscow has extended the pretrial detention of the former leader of a regional organization for jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny in Bashkortostan.
The Basmanny district court ruled of December 23 that Lilia Chanysheva must stay in pretrial detention at least until April 9, 2022.
Chanysheva's lawyer Vladimir Voronin said the ruling will be appealed.
The 39-yer-old activist was arrested on extremism charges in Bashkortostan's capital, Ufa, on November 22, and later transferred to Moscow, where she was ordered to stay until at least January 9.
Chanysheva 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.
A court later accepted the prosecutor's claim, and labeled the national network extremist, effectively outlawing them.
Voronin said at the time that his client's arrest was the first of its kind 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, he said.
Navalny himself has been in prison since February, 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 fled the country shortly before and after Chanysheva's arrest.
