Sergey Bokarev, who for years officially contributed to Russian opposition Alexey Navalny’s anticorruption efforts and a critic of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy, relocated to Georgia in 2018. As he filed for an asylym, Georgia’s Migration service dismissed the application and ruled to extradite Bokarev back to Russia.
As Bokarev filed a lawsuit to the court, he was imprisoned for 9 months, but eventually succeeded in the court of first instance. Nevertheless, the authorities appealed the ruling in the higher court – Tbilisi Court of Appeals – which sent back the matter back to the Migration Service, a part of the executive fully entitled to repeat its decision of extraditing Bokarev.
“Despite this prolongation of the affair, what matters most is that the Georgian government still very much wants send Mr Bokarev back and act like a satellite of the Russian Federation,” Giorgi Kandelaki, a European Georgia member told Georgian media outside the court building.
Mr Bokarev is convinced he and his family will face reprisals if they are indeed extradited to Russia.
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