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Meetings between the late Alexei Navalny and his lawyers in a Russian penal colony were secretly filmed with hidden cameras, his team revealed in a video released earlier today. Navalny’s associates received the footage after offering a reward for assistance in investigating the opposition figure’s murder.
The recordings, which show confidential attorney-client meetings, were made illegally by employees of the Russian government. Cameras installed in the ceiling were also used to capture documents involved in the meetings. As a result, everything Navalny wrote was caught on tape, said the opposition politician’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya:
“It’s absolutely obvious that this footage was taken with a hidden camera. It’s installed in the prison, in the room designated for meetings with lawyers. The camera records every such meeting and captures audio as well. These videos, which I’m showing you now, should not exist at all. Meetings between a client and their lawyer are protected by attorney-client privilege. According to the law, no one has the right to know their content, be present during them, or, even worse, record them… In reality, everything was secretly recorded — not only by the camera I showed you, but also by another one, embedded in the ceiling directly above Alexei’s head, capturing every word he wrote on a piece of paper.
Alexei once told me that during one of his meetings with a lawyer, he stood on the table and punched the ceiling. A poorly secured, large camera hidden behind a ceiling tile fell down.”
The footage shows that the messages included political posts for social media, which Navalny passed to his team through his lawyers. Currently, Navalny’s attorneys — Igor Sergunin, Alexei Liptser, and Vadim Kobzev — are on trial for “participation in an extremist organization.”
Many of Navalny’s associates and supporters have been charged with extremism in the years since 2021, when the Russian government labeled Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and his regional offices as extremist organizations. This designation has put former employees, volunteers, and supporters at risk of criminal prosecution.
During a government meeting on Dec. 10 — the same day that the recordings were made public — Vladimir Putin claimed that “respecting the rights of individuals in places of detention is extremely important.”
Putin’s words were uttered just under ten months to the day — Feb. 16, 2024 — when Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service reported the death of Alexei Navalny in the IK-3 prison above the Arctic Circle. The politician's family and associates are certain that he was murdered.
Russian government documents corroborate the conclusion that Navalny did not die of natural causes. In late September, The Insider released an investigation based on hundreds of official files related to Navalny’s death. They indicate that the politician was poisoned while in prison in Russia.