A judge in Yekaterinburg has ordered human rights advocate Alexei Sokolov to be detained ahead of trial following his arrest on charges of treason, according to the exiled news outlet Mediazona, which reported on Thursday.
Sokolov, who has long been an outspoken critic of prisoner treatment, claimed prior to the court decision that authorities accused him of providing details about prison abuse to “foreign organizations.”
He stated that the Russian government views this information sharing as a “threat to national security.”
Sokolov mentioned that he had been collecting data for the UN’s Committee Against Torture to submit complaints regarding human rights violations in Russia.
In Russia, treason is a serious offense that can result in a life sentence for men, while women may face up to 20 years in prison for similar charges.
Sokolov was taken into custody on Tuesday, and law enforcement officials conducted a search of his residence as part of a separate investigation into his alleged ties to an organization classified as “undesirable” by the Russian government.
Details about the specific organization with which Sokolov is allegedly affiliated remain unclear, although his own group, the Legal Foundation, is not prohibited in Russia.
On the same day of Sokolov’s arrest, authorities detained two other human rights activists in the Urals region—Roman Kachanov and Larisa Zakharova—who are members of the Ural Human Rights Defenders organization.
These activists, also involved in advocacy for prisoners, have been charged with links to an “undesirable organization.”
Additionally, the Leninsky District Court in Yekaterinburg is currently handling another case against Sokolov for “repeatedly displaying extremist symbols” on his Telegram channel. Mediazona reports that the symbol cited is the Facebook logo.
In 2022, Russia designated Meta, Facebook’s parent company, as a “terrorist and extremist” organization, accusing it of “Russophobia” for not removing content that called for violence against Russian soldiers during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
