A Russian journalist who covered Navalny's trials is jailed in Moscow on charges of extremism

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A Russian journalist who covered Navalny's trials is jailed in Moscow on charges of extremism

2024-03-29 22:32 Last Updated At：22:40

A Moscow court on Friday ordered a Russian journalist who covered the trials of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and other dissidents to remain in custody pending an investigation and trial on charges of extremism.

Antonina Favorskaya, also identified by court officials as Antonina Kravtsova, was arrested earlier in March. On Friday, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ordered that she remain in pre-trial detention at least until May 28.

The hearing was conducted behind closed doors at the request of the investigators, which was supported by the presiding judge. Favorskaya and her lawyer protested the decision, the independent news site Mediazona reported.

“I am completely against a closed process. The press needs to know what’s going on here, what I’m being accused of,” the outlet quoted Favorskaya as saying.

She is accused of collecting material, producing and editing videos and publications for Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption, which had been outlawed as extremist by Russian authorities, according to court officials. She has been charged with involvement with an extremist group, a criminal offense punishable by up to six years in prison.

Favorskaya was initially detained on March 17 after laying flowers on Navalny’s grave. She spent 10 days in jail after being accused of disobedience toward the police, but when that period of detention ended, authorities charged her again and ordered her to appear in court Friday, according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group.

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said that Favorskaya did not publish anything on the Foundation’s platforms and suggested that Russian authorities have targeted her because she was doing her job as a journalist.

“Even if we discard the falsity of the accusation, its essence remains — the journalist is accused of journalistic activity,” Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony in February. Favorskaya covered Navalny’s court hearings for years, as well as trials of other Kremlin critics swept up in a relentless government clampdown.

She was one of six journalists detained across Russia this month, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said Thursday.

Favorskaya is one of several Russian journalists targeted by authorities as part of the crackdown on dissent in Russia, aimed at opposition figures, journalists, activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Her jailing by the court came on the first anniversary of the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal who is awaiting trial in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison on espionage charges, which he and his employer have vehemently denied.

The U.S. government has declared Gershkovich wrongfully detained, with officials accusing Moscow of using the journalist as a pawn for political ends.

Pope visits Venice to speak to the artists and inmates behind the Biennale's must-see prison show

2024-04-29 01:53 Last Updated At：02:01

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Venice has always been a place of contrasts, of breathtaking beauty and devastating fragility, where history, religion, art and nature have collided over the centuries to produce an otherworldly gem of a city. But even for a place that prides itself on its culture of unusual encounters, Pope Francis’ visit Sunday stood out.

Francis traveled to the lagoon city to visit the Holy See’s pavilion at the Biennale contemporary art show and meet with the people who created it. But because the Vatican decided to mount its exhibit in Venice’s women’s prison, and invited inmates to collaborate with the artists, the whole project assumed a far more complex meaning, touching on Francis’ belief in the power of art to uplift and unite, and of the need to give hope and solidarity to society’s most marginalized.

Francis hit on both messages during his visit, which began in the courtyard of the Giudecca prison where he met with the women inmates one by one. As some of them wept, Francis urged them to use their time in prison as a chance for “moral and material rebirth."

“Paradoxically, a stay in prison can mark the beginning of something new, through the rediscovery of the unsuspected beauty in us and in others, as symbolized by the artistic event you are hosting and the project to which you actively contribute,” Francis said.

Francis then met with Biennale artists in the prison chapel, decorated with an installation by Brazilian visual artist Sonia Gomes of objects dangling from the ceiling, meant to draw the viewer’s gaze upward. He urged the artists to embrace the Biennale’s theme this year “Strangers Everywhere,” to show solidarity with all those on the margins.

The Vatican exhibit has turned the Giudecca prison, a former convent for reformed prostitutes, into one of the must-see attractions of this year’s Biennale, even though to see it visitors must reserve in advance and go through a security check. It has become an unusual art world darling that greets visitors at the entrance with Maurizio Cattelan’s wall mural of two giant filthy feet, a work that recalls Caravaggio’s dirty feet or the feet that Francis washes each year in a Holy Thursday ritual that he routinely performs on prisoners.

The exhibit also includes a short film starring the inmates and Zoe Saldana, and prints in the prison coffee shop by onetime Catholic nun and American social activist Corita Kent.

Francis’ dizzying morning visit, which ended with Mass in St. Mark's Square, represented an increasingly rare outing for the 87-year-old pontiff, who has been hobbled by health and mobility problems that have ruled out any foreign trips so far this year.

And Venice, with its 121 islands and 436 bridges, isn't an easy place to negotiate. But Francis pulled it off, arriving by helicopter from Rome, crossing the Giudecca Canal in a water taxi and then arriving in St. Mark's Square in a mini popemobile that traversed the Grand Canal via a pontoon bridge erected for the occasion.

During an encounter with young people at the iconic Santa Maria della Salute basilica, Francis acknowledged the miracle that is Venice, admiring its “enchanting beaty” and tradition as a place of East-West encounter, but warning that it is increasingly vulnerable to climate change and depopulation.

“Venice is at one with the waters upon which it sits,” Francis said. “Without the care and safeguarding of this natural environment, it might even cease to exist.”

Venice, sinking under rising sea levels and weighed down by the impact of overtourism, is in the opening days of an experiment to try to limit the sort of day trips that Francis undertook Sunday.

Venetian authorities last week launched a pilot program to charge day-trippers 5 euros ($5.35) apiece on peak travel days. The aim is to encourage them to stay longer or come at off-peak times, to cut down on crowds and make the city more livable for its dwindling number of residents.

For Venice’s Catholic patriarch, Archbishop Francesco Moraglia, the new tax program is a worthwhile experiment, a potential necessary evil to try to preserve Venice as a livable city for visitors and residents alike.

Moraglia said Francis’ visit — the first by a pope to the Biennale — was a welcome boost, especially for the women of the Giudecca prison who participated in the exhibit as tour guides and as protagonists in some of the artworks.

He acknowledged that Venice over the centuries has had a long, complicated, love-hate relationship with the papacy, despite its central importance to Christianity.

The relics of St. Mark — the top aide to St. Peter, the first pope — are held here in the basilica, which is one of the most important and spectacular in all of Christendom. Several popes have hailed from Venice — in the past century alone three pontiffs were elected after being Venice patriarchs. And Venice hosted the last conclave held outside the Vatican: the 1799-1800 vote that elected Pope Paul VII.

But for centuries before that, relations between the independent Venetian Republic and the Papal States were anything but cordial as the two sides dueled over control of the church. Popes in Rome issued interdicts against Venice that essentially excommunicated the entire territory. Venice flexed its muscles back by expelling entire religious orders, including Francis’ own Jesuits.

“It’s a history of contrasts because they were two competitors for so many centuries,” said Giovanni Maria Vian, a church historian and retired editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano whose family hails from Venice. “The papacy wanted to control everything, and Venice jealously guarded its independence.”

Moraglia said that troubled history is long past and that Venice was welcoming Francis with open arms and gratitude, in keeping with its history as a bridge between cultures.

“The history of Venice, the DNA of Venice — beyond the language of beauty and culture that unifies — there's this historic character that says that Venice has always been a place of encounter," he said.

Francis said as much as he closed out Mass in St. Mark's before an estimated 10,500 people.

“Venice, which has always been a place of encounter and cultural exchange, is called to be a sign of beauty available to all," Francis said. "Starting with the least, a sign of fraternity and care for our common home.”

Winfield reported from Rome. Associated Press writer Colleen Barry contributed.