The administration of a prison in Russia's Vladimir region has barred journalists from entering the facility, where the preliminary hearing into a new criminal case against already jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny is set to start on June 6.
Navalny's press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, wrote on Twitter that journalists were barred from entering the penitentiary's territory hours before the hearing.
"They are doing this because there is no evidence in the case. And the only way for them to save face (as they think) is to fully classify [the case]," Yarmysh tweeted.
Navalny faces charges of creating an "extremist" group, making calls for "extremism," creating a nonprofit organization that violates citizens' rights, financing of "extremism," involving a minor in criminal activities, and rehabilitating Nazism.
When first making public the new case in April, Navalny called the charges "absurd."
Navalny also said another case charging him with propagating terrorism and Nazism was launched in October over his self-exiled associates' statements on the Popular Politics YouTube channel. The comments criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government and condemned Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed in April that Navalny's associates, along with Ukraine's secret services, were involved in the assassination of pro-Kremlin journalist and propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg.
Navalny has been in prison since February 2021 after he was arrested a month earlier upon his return to Russia from Germany -- where he had been undergoing treatment for a near-fatal poisoning with a military-grade nerve agent that he says was ordered by Putin.
The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny's poisoning, even though experts say only state actors have access to such a nerve agent.
On June 6, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ordered Russia to pay 40,000 euros ($42,800) to Navalny for refusing to investigate his poisoning.