Alexei Navalny’s lawyer Vasily Dubkov reportedly arrested in Moscow weeks after Putin foe died in penal colony
Alexei Navalny’s former lawyer — who helped the late opposition leader’s mother recover his body last week from the Russian penal colony where he died — was arrested in Moscow on Tuesday, according to reports.
Vasily Dubkov had been taken to the Schcherbinksky district police in Russia’s capital, the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and SOTA Telegram channel reported.
Dubkov was said to have been charged with “disorderly conduct,” according to Novaya Gazeta’s sources.
The lawyer was released from custody a short time later, as he told the outlet Verstka.
Dubkov declined to comment on the circumstances of his arrest, only saying that he considered it an “obstruction of his legal practice.”
After Navalny, 47, collapsed and died under unexplained circumstances at the remote “Polar Wolf” penal colony on Feb. 16, Dubkov had accompanied the late politician’s mother, Lyudmila Navalanaya, to the Yamalo-Nenets region to demand that the prison authorities hand over her son’s body.
Navalnaya and her legal team had spent days in talks with members of the Russian Investigative Committee, until Navalany’s body was finally released on Saturday.
Navalnaya, 69, had earlier accused investigators of trying to “blackmail” her by withholding the body unless she agreed to a private funeral for her son, which she refused to accept.
Three other lawyers who represented Navalny — Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Aleksei Lipster — were arrested in October on charges of “extremism.”
Two other attorneys with ties to President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic critics have been placed on a wanted list after feeling Russia.
