Russia Adds Navalny's Regional Campaign Offices to 'Extremism' List
Russia's financial monitoring agency said on Friday it had added jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's network of regional campaign offices to a list of organizations involved in "terrorism and extremism".
Allies
of Navalny said on Thursday they were disbanding the network as the authorities
sought to ban them.
A
Moscow court is also considering whether to declare Navalny's Anti-Corruption
Foundation (FBK) "extremist", a ruling that would give Russian
authorities the power to jail activists and freeze bank accounts.
Navalny,
President Vladimir Putin's fiercest political rival, is serving a 2-1/2 year
jail sentence for parole violations on an earlier embezzlement conviction that
he says was politically motivated.
Pressure
has also been mounting on organizations associated with Navalny since he was
arrested in January and jailed the following month.
Last
year, Navalny survived an attack with a nerve agent that he blamed on Putin.
Russian authorities denied any involvement and questioned whether he was even
poisoned.
