The Moscow City Court has extended the pretrial detention of opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza despite a physician's request to release him immediately due to an illness described as polyneuropathy, a disease affecting peripheral nerves.
The ruling came on March 6 as the court began preliminary hearings into the case against Kara-Murza, who faces up to 24 years in prison on high-treason and other charges that he and his supporters call politically motivated.
Kara-Murza's lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said after the hearing that his client's trial will be held behind closed doors by a "troika" -- three judges, one of whom will most likely be Sergei Podoprigorov, who has been placed under sanctions related to the U.S. Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
Among the targets of the Magnitsky Act are those believed to have been involved in the death of a whistle-blowing Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Moscow jail in 2009.
Podoprigorov was targeted for his involvement in Magnitsky's detention.
Kara-Murza was one of those who took part in creating the list of Russian officials targeted by the Magnitsky Act.
The preliminary hearing will resume on March 13.
Kara-Murza's lawyer said the illness was a result of two separate incidents in Moscow -- in 2015 and 2017-- when his client fell deathly ill with symptoms consistent with poisoning.
Kara-Murza and his associates have said the Kremlin must have been behind his poisoning. The Kremlin has denied involvement.
SEE ALSO: New FBI Documents Shed Light On Probe Into Russian Activist's Near-Fatal IllnessesThe 41-year-old politician was detained in April 2022 and sentenced to 15 days in jail on a charge of disobeying police. He was later charged with spreading false information about the Russian Army for talks he held with U.S. lawmakers in Arizona.
In November, Kara-Murza was honored with the Berlin-based Axel Springer Foundation's award for courage.
In October, he won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to honor "outstanding" civil society action in the defense of human rights.
On March 3, the U.S. State Department and Treasury announced a new round of sanctions against those involved in what U.S. authorities called the "arbitrary detention" and "serious human rights abuses" of Kara-Murza.