Russia prison authorities threaten Kremlin critic Navalny to return back or face jail

Russian authorities have asked Alexei Navalny to return back from Germany by Tuesday morning or face a jail term. According to Associated Press, Russian prison authorities, citing a Lancet report, said that Navalny was discharged from the hospital on September 20 and by October he became normal, thus he should return back to Russia and fulfill his obligations assigned to him under the suspended sentence. Navalny was flown to Germany earlier this year after he became ill and collapsed in a plane from Tomsk to Moscow. 

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It was revealed later that Navalny, who is a staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was poisoned using the banned Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. The international community suspects Kremlin's role behind Navalny's poisoning, but the Russian government has dismissed all allegations and has demanded evidence to conduct its own investigation. The European Union and the United Kingdom have already imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a chemical organisation. 

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Navalny recently exposed the role of FSB, Russia's principal agency to maintain internal security, in his poisoning as he called two officers posing as a general's aide and duped them into confessing how the agency poisoned the politician. Navalny got one of the officers to admit that FSB was behind the poisoning by asking what went wrong during the operation. The officer, unaware that he was being stung, said that they applied novichok on Navalny's underwear while the latter was staying at a hotel in Tomsk. 

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'Violation of sentence terms'

Now, the Russian prison service has issued an ultimatum to Navalny, asking him to report to its office by Tuesday morning or be jailed for violating suspended sentence terms. Navalny had received a 3 and a half-year suspended sentence back in 2014 after he was found guilty of money laundering and fraud. Navalny's brother Oleg had also received a prison term in the same case. Both had challenged their sentence in the European Court of Human Rights. 

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