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There is about to be a hearing to authorize your arrest."
"But we're in a police station."
"Yes. We were allowed into the building just now and told there is going to be an off-site session of the Khimki court."
"This can't be happening," I say.
"The head of the Khimki police department is applying for you to be placed under arrest for a month."
"Well, who are they?" I ask, indicating the people in the chairs.
"These are 'the public,' I have no idea how they got in."
I notice "the public" are all glum middle-aged men who avoid my gaze. "You have to be joking."
What is happening is impossible even by the standards of Putin's courts. I was formally put on the wanted list for failing to register with the criminal division while undergoing treatment in Germany after being poisoned. I was required to report there twice a month under a sentence that had already been declared unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. In theory the Simonovsky District Court, which has jurisdiction over my place of residence, can decide whether to turn my suspended sentence into a custodial one on the grounds of my failure to attend. It has done just that more than once in the past after I was detained for participating in protest rallies. The argument was that this too was a violation of the conditions of my suspended sentence, which required me to "behave well and not break the law." Hearings of this kind are needed for intimidation, and to remind me that I can be thrown in jail at any given moment. Until now, they have invariably concluded with a warning: "Okay, we're not going to jail you this time, but this is your last warning." At least those proceedings had the formal appearance of a court session. There were summonses, dates of hearings, opposing sides. The criminal division would demand I be jailed and say how terrible I was. We would dispute that. But what was this? A law court in a police station? And anyway, what did the head of the Khimki police precinct have to do with me, and what right did he have to demand I be held under arrest for a month?"...
I leave my cell in a police station for a meeting with my lawyer, only to find I am in a court, complete with its own fake public and fake journalists. When the judge comes in, I yell at her, "Are all of you out of your minds? What's going on? Who are these people, and how come they knew about this trial before I did?"
"These are journalists and members of the public, and this is an open trial."
At this moment, beautifully timed, we hear people in the street chanting, "Free Navalny!" and "Let us in!"
"Right now there are members of the public down there. Let them into the trial," I say.
"Everybody who wished to attend has been admitted," I'm told.
"You can hear yourself, they are shouting 'Let us in!'"
"People have been standing there for several hours, and no one is being allowed in," Olga says. "I waited there myself for three hours and was admitted only a few minutes ago. And I found out that there was to be a trial three minutes before it started."
"Everybody who wished to attend has been admitted," the judge repeats.
"You have said this is an open trial. I demand you admit the journalists. There are dozens of them."
"The trial is open. Applications were received from the press service of the Ministry of the Interior and from . . ." -she names two pro-Kremlin publications. "Nobody else expressed a wish to attend the trial."
"Nobody else knew anything about the trial!" I say.
"Our trial is open. Any media organization could submit an application, but they did not wish to," the judge says.
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