Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and eight of his closest allies, most of whom have already fled the country.
Navalny, who was imprisoned in February for two and a half years on old fraud charges he calls trumped up after returning from a near-fatal poisoning abroad, could face up to 10 more years in jail on the charges of running an extremist organization.
The opposition figure, along with the former head of his political network Leonid Volkov and the former director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) Ivan Zhdanov, are accused of creating and leading FBK, which was banned in Russia as an “extremist” organization in June.
Both Volkov and Zhdanov fled the country earlier this year to escape criminal prosecution on other charges.