MOSCOW. Feb 17 (Interfax) - The demand of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for the release of opposition activist Alexei Navalny has a political background, not a legal one, Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Leonid Slutsky said.
"The ECHR demand for Navalny's immediate release stated by his lawyer lies in the political realm, not in the legal one," Slutsky told Interfax on Wednesday.
"Russia's opponents are increasingly using the European Court of Human Rights as an instrument of pressure and politicization, in this case, intrusion into the area of responsibility of the Russian judicial system," he said.
"And now we see biased steps in favor of a certain group of people, which experts say are based on internal regulations, not on the European Convention of Human Rights," he said.