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On December 17, 2020 in Berlin, one month to the day before his return to Russia and his arrest, Alexeï Navalny met Jacques Maire, then a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The European elected official was appointed as rapporteur in the investigation into the poisoning which almost cost the life of the opponent, and whose objective is to “legally qualify the facts” and to establish the responsibility of the Russian authorities. In a statement filmed in a hotel meeting room, Navalny returns, in English, to the circumstances of the summer 2020 attack, the role of the secret services in his life since he decided to run for office. Russian presidency, and what he thinks of Vladimir Putin, who has never mentioned his name in public. Only four months after coming close to death, the opponent has regained all his splendor and enthusiasm. “We expected to have someone convalescing, a little dejected. We saw a fighter, we saw a hyperdetermined character, physically very present, quite empathetic, accessible”testifies Jacques Maire, who had before him “a block of granite”ready to “no concession in his fight”.
With the agreement of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Jacques Maire is today releasing the video of this hearing to the public debate “while it was not intended to be”, via Release and LCI. “Documents of public interest for history”comments the former MP, “also a way of paying tribute [à Navalny]. Because everyone who sees this video sees this man who leaves the hospital, who has just been poisoned and who says to himself, I’m going back into battle tomorrow.
Three weeks after the death of Alexeï Navalny in a penitentiary beyond the Russian Arctic Circle, and while the flow of Muscovites paying homage to him does not dry up at the cemetery where he has been resting since March 1, the question of future of its work. On March 15, 2022, after invading Ukraine, Russia slammed the door of the Council of Europe, of which it had been a member since 1996. “All the appeals made by Navalny, and the Russian political prisoners, all the offenses that were noted until March 15, 2022 and one year later are still valid, are still in progressinsists Jacques Maire. It is not because we withdraw from the Council of Europe that these bodies are suspended or canceled.” Unfortunately, it is no longer a question of working for the security or survival of the main opponent of Vladimir Putin, but “for justice and for the law, so that for him as for the others, a certain number of procedures can be completed, with or without the cooperation of the Russians. So that, before history, before the Russians, justice and European justice in particular, is done and said.”
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