Navalny Not Prisoner Of Conscience, Amnesty Media Manager For Eastern Europe Confirms

Umer Jamshaid Published February 24, 2021 | 09:10 AM

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2021) Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, whose suspended sentence in an earlier fraud case was replaced with a prison term over probation breaches, cannot be called a prisoner of conscience anymore, Amnesty International Media Manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Alexander Artemyev confirmed to Russian outlet MediaZona.

Canadian-US journalist Aaron Mate earlier posted on Twitter a screenshot of an email by Amnesty International stating that the human rights organization no longer considered Navalny a prisoner of conscience.

"Right, we will no longer use the phrase 'prisoner of conscience' in relation to him, since our legal and political department, having studied Navalny's statements in the mid-2000s, has come to the conclusion that they reach the level of hate speech," Artemyev explained.