Russia has arrested the lawyers who represented the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny

According to independent reports, Igor Sergunin was the only one of the three to plead guilty and was given a lighter sentence of three and a half years.

Alexey Liptser was sentenced to five years in a colony, and Vadim Kobzev to five and a half years.

Kobzev’s own lawyer Andrey Hrivtsov said that the evidence against them is an illegal invasion of privacy.

“They are not allowed to eavesdrop on lawyer-client meetings in the penitentiary, in principle, there is a direct prohibition by legislation,” he told BBC Russian.

The trial of the three lawyers was held near the penal colony in Pokrov, where Navalny was originally sent in January 2021 when he returned to Russia after surviving a nerve agent attack he blamed on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin denied the charge and Navalny remained in Russian penal colonies north of the Arctic Circle and 1,900 km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow until his death.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, blamed Putin for his death, which officials called “sudden death syndrome.”