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.
"This once again confirms that the adoption of the amendments to the Russian Constitution on the supremacy of the main law of Russia over verdicts of international organizations was the right thing to do," Slutsky said.
"Thus, we have protected the Russian legal field from attempts of outside interference and the forcing of decisions contradicting the Russian legislation," he said.
The ECHR earlier on Wednesday demanded that the Russian authorities release Navalny, his lawyer Olga Mikhailova told Interfax.
"The European Court of Human Rights has invoked Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, resolving that the Russian government must immediately free Navalny from the detention facility," Mikhailova said.
This decision has been made by "the ECHR for the first time, and the Russian authorities must obey it," she said.