Navalny Judge Digs in Heels Again

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – June 10, 2013) The KirovLes trial judge Sergei Blinov has once again rejected motions for his removal by Alexei Navalny’s defense team who complained about procedural violations and case prejudice, a new reports said Monday.

“The court has taken the decision to reject the defense’s request to remove the presiding judge,” Blinov announced, adding that the defendants’ arguments were unfounded and not based on law, Interfax reported.
Listen

Svetlana Davydova, the lawyer of Navalny and his codefendant Pyotr Ofitserov, had earlier called for the Kirov District Court’s judge to be removed, citing bias and impartiality of the court.

“The main reason [for the motion] is violations during the questioning of witness Vyacheslav Opalev,” Navalny wrote on his Twitter blog.

Davydova said that Opalev, a key witness in the case and a former KirovLes CEO, was not warned about criminal liability for refusal to testify. This helped Opalev avoid answering the defense team’s questions, Davydova added.

Navalny is currently standing trial in Kirov on charges of embezzling 16 million rubles ($500,000) from the state-owned company through the forced sale of timber at below-market prices to VLK, Ofitserov’s company.