Russian opposition leader Navalny faces surprise court hearing

MOSCOW — Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was brought before an impromptu court hearing on Monday following his detention upon returning to Russia on Sunday night.

The hearing — which is expected to determine how long he will be kept in custody — is taking place at the police station where Navalny spent the night without access to a lawyer.

In a video posted on social media from the courtroom, Navalny described the hearing as “the highest degree of lawlessness.” 

The opposition leader was detained at passport control on Sunday evening shortly after his plane from Germany was re-routed to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

The last-minute diversion meant some two thousand of his followers who had come to Vnukovo Airport, where his plane had been scheduled to land, were left out in the cold. 

Navalny spent five months in Germany, where he underwent treatment after a near-fatal assassination attempt with the Novichok nerve agent. He has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the attack, a claim the Kremlin denies.

Russia’s prison service had warned the opposition politician would be detained for supposedly breaching the terms of a suspended sentence given to him in a 2014 embezzlement case, which his followers have denounced as politically motivated. Navalny’s brother, Oleg, has already served 3.5 years in jail for the same case.

EU countries have been quick to condemn Navalny’s detention and have demanded his immediate release. 

The criticism has been dismissed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a ploy to distract from what he called а “deep crisis of the liberal development model.”