Oppositionist Alexei Navalny was told in the colony that he was no longer subject to attorney-client privilege. Lawyer Vladimir Voronin explained to The Insider that the administration of the colony cannot cancel attorney-client privilege, but it can create difficulties in the exchange of documents between the lawyer and the prisoner.
“Attorney secrecy cannot be abolished because it is enshrined in federal law. No administration of the colony can cancel it, but it can create real obstacles for a lawyer. Conventionally, a lawyer comes and says: “I have 50 sheets of text with me,” and they tell him at the checkpoint: “Show me what you have written.” And then the lawyer decides that he will not show anything, he will go to court and will appeal against the specific actions of the employee who did not let him in. Or, on the contrary, the lawyer will consider that it is now more important for him to get to his client and let the employee look at the text, ”said Voronin.
He admitted that he did not really understand yet how this might look in the case of Navalny. “There is a very fine line here. If the correspondence is conducted through official mail, it is in any case read by the censor, and everything that happens between the lawyer and the client in the visiting room is confidential. They can watch it, but they can't listen, at least they shouldn't. Most likely, of course, they are listening,” the lawyer said. – When we go to Lefortovo or Matrosskaya Tishina, the papers that we carry can be read there. Here you already need to choose what is more important: not to read your paper or go to your client. Whether they will read what the lawyers take away in their notebook is unknown.”
Earlier, the following message appeared on Navalny’s social networks: “They took me out of the cell to the commission, where the authorities solemnly announced:“ It has been established that you do not stop engaging in your criminal activities, you commit crimes directly from places of deprivation of liberty. And you communicate with accomplices through lawyers. Therefore, we cancel the attorney-client privilege in your regard. All incoming and outgoing lawyer documents will now be subject to a three-day check.” To my surprised question: “Can you clarify what terrible extremist crimes I am committing?” I was told: “And this is classified information, you are not supposed to know it, we will not give you the verification materials. All you need to know is that attorney-client privilege no longer applies to you.”
Not only that, they filled the tiny slot for transferring documents in the lawyer's room. So the lawyers and I now communicate through double plastic glass, inside of which there is a grill. Communication is more like a pantomime, to be honest. It works out great. Now, if the lawyer wants to agree with me a draft complaint against the colony, he must give it to the colony itself, which in three days to me, and then the three-day return trip with my edits. Very comfortably. True, from my right to protection, and so illusory, even formally nothing remains. I don’t know what triggered the authorities so much: the list of 6000, the Smart Vote or the prisoners’ union. For me, all three ideas are cool.”
In early September, Navalny was transferred to the ShIZO for the fourth time. Because of this, he lost his dates: “Evaluate, by the way, the pettiness of these swindlers. My wife and parents have been waiting for a meeting with me for four months, and now it came up, and they transfer me to strict conditions, where dates are once every six months. So I'm on my way." In his opinion, this is how the Kremlin reacts to the “Smart Vote” and calls for sanctions against Putin and his associates.
For the first time, Navalny was placed in a punishment cell on August 15. Formally, due to the fact that he “regularly unbuttons” the top button of his prison uniform while in the industrial zone. The second time he was sent to a punishment cell on August 24, allegedly because during the previous escort he did not hold his hands behind his back for three seconds. On August 30, Navalny ended up in a ShIZO for the third time – for "incorrectly introduced himself."