Trial of Putin foe begins, swiftly adjourned

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Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny today went on trial on charges he says were ordered by President Vladimir Putin but the process was swiftly adjourned to allow the defence more time to prepare.

Hundreds of journalists and Navalny supporters descended on the provincial northern city of Kirov 900 kilometres from Moscow for the trial of Navalny and a co-defendant on embezzlement charges related to a timber deal.

But the first act in what the Opposition claims is the latest political show trial in Putin’s Russia was over within less than 40 minutes after the judge partially approved a request from the defence for more time.

Judge Sergei Blinov ordered the trial adjourned for one week until April 24, although the defence had asked for a longer period of one month. Navalny, who risks up to 10 years in prison in the embezzlement case, has predicted he will be convicted and possibly jailed but warned it is only a matter of time before Putin falls from power.

Dressed in a white shirt without a tie and jeans and looking relaxed, Navalny sat with his lawyers and co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov while supporters and media thronged the small courthouse.

Showing his confidence, Navalny flashed smiles and used his mobile phone to take a picture of the dozens of journalists pointing cameras at him. The proceedings had got off to a chaotic start with judge Blinov’s opening statements an almost inaudible mumble and Navalny supporters shouting at him to turn up the volume.

“One way or another I am sure that during the hearing my innocence will be completely proved. But what decision the judge makes or whoever makes the decision, we’ll see,” Navalny said after the adjournment was announced. “I won’t go on about how the case is fabricated and falsified. I am completely innocent,” he said.

The process is a potential turning point in the standoff between the Kremlin and the Opposition that erupted with mass Opposition protests in the winter of 2011-2012 ahead of Putin’s return for a third Kremlin term last May.

It is also just the latest trial in post-Soviet Russia to be denounced by the Opposition as a political act of revenge by Putin, after the jailing of anti-Kremlin tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the radical punk group Pussy Riot.

Navalny is charged with organising the misappropriation in a timber deal of more than $512,000 from the Kirov regional government that he advised in 2009.