DISINFO: The Yves Rocher case against Navalny is not political
SUMMARY
It is sometimes seen on the internet that the Yves Rocher Affair was a political affair, this is a fake!
In their complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg demanded that the Yves Rocher Affair be regarded as political persecution. The court declared this part of their complaint inadmissible.
It is also said that Navalny was cleared by the ECHR, and this is also a fake!
The European Court of Human Rights does not have the competence to exonerate or convict. It is about finding violations in the procedure, which was done in the Navalny case. Russia even paid the damages fixed by the ECHR.
RESPONSE
Recurrent disinformation message on Alexei Navalny and the Yves Rocher case, claiming that Russia had been condemned for technical issues of procedure in the trial but the ground was correct and that Russia had fulfiled all its international commitments since Alexei Navalny was paid the damages decided by the ECHR.
On 02/02/2021 the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe stated that:
Today’s judgment ordering Alexei Navalny’s imprisonment in a correctional colony for three and a half years defies all credibility and contravenes Russia’s international human rights obligations. Mr Navalny should not have been arrested and tried in the first place because the criminal conviction that has served as a basis for today’s custodial sentence had already been considered arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable by the European Court of Human Rights. With this decision, the Russian authorities not only further exacerbate human rights violations as already established by the European Court of Human Rights, they also send a signal undermining the protection of the rights of all Russian citizens and affecting the integrity of the European system of human rights protection. The Russian authorities should restore a climate of respect for human rights based on the international standards by which the Russian Federation is bound.
Moreover, the final Ruling of April 2019 (Application no. 43734/14) should also be taken into account and not only the judgement of October 2017 (Application no. 101/15) as does RT for the purpose of this story. As RFE/RL summarises :
The ECHR ruled in October 2017 that the Russian courts violated their right to a fair trial in the case. That ECHR ruling initially held that their convictions in the Yves Rocher case fell outside the definition of fraud. When Russia appealed that decision, the ECHR reconsidered the case and in November 2018 expanded its ruling against Russian authorities. It found that Russia violated Navalny’s rights over numerous arrests and detentions from 2012 to 2014, calling them "unlawful and arbitrary" and "politically motivated."
Read also similar cases: ECHR’s decisions are not binding for Russia, Navalny is mentally ill, Navalny was about to be extradited from Germany by Interpol on criminal charges.