Three lawyers who once represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were jailed in Russia on Friday as part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent that has reached levels not seen since Soviet times.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Aleksej Liptser were sentenced to prison terms of 3.5 to five years by the court in the city of Petushka, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow. They were arrested in October 2023 on charges of involvement in extremist groups, which authorities believed to be Navalny’s networks.

The case was widely seen as a way to increase pressure on the opposition to dissuade defense lawyers from accepting political cases.

At the time, Navalny was serving a 19-year prison sentence for several criminal convictions, including extremism. He died in a Russian prison camp in February 2023.

Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that Kobzev said in his closing statement in court on January 10 that “we are being tried for communicating Navalny’s thoughts to other people.”

Navalny’s networks were deemed extremist following a 2021 ruling that outlawed his organizations — the Anti-Corruption Foundation and a network of regional offices — as extremist groups.

Critics of the Kremlin condemned the verdict, which exposed everyone involved in the organizations to criminal prosecution, as politically motivated and designed to stifle Navalny’s activities.

According to Navalny’s allies, the authorities accused the lawyers of using their positions to pass information from him to his team.

Died in prison

Navalny, an anti-corruption fighter and outspoken opponent of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in 2021 after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from nerve agent poisoning blamed on the Kremlin. He was sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison.

After two more trials, his sentence was extended to 19 years. He and his allies said the charges were politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of wanting to imprison him for life.

In December 2023, Navalny was moved from a penal colony in the Vladimir region east of Moscow to one above the Arctic Circle, where he died in February at the age of 47 under circumstances that are still unclear. His widow, Yulia Navalny, and members of his team claimed that he was killed on orders from the Kremlin. Officials have denied the allegations.

Two other lawyers of Navalny, Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov, are wanted, but no longer live in Russia. Mihajlova, who defended Navalny for a decade, said that she was accused of extremism in absentia.

Kobzev, Liptser and Sergunin are considered political prisoners, according to human rights advocates at Memorial, Russia’s most prominent human rights group that won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. The group is demanding their immediate release.