A Polish court has ruled that two men suspected of assaulting Russian opposition activist Leonid Volkov in Vilnius can be released on bail, a lawyer for one of them said on Thursday.
Reuters news agency was the first to report the news.
Volkov, an associate of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who died in prison earlier this year, was attacked on the evening of March 12 in Vilnius in a car near his home.
The attacker broke the car window, sprayed tear gas and started to hit Volkov with a meat mallet. His arm and leg were broken.
The two men suspected of assaulting him were arrested in Poland in April under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Lithuania. Their identities have not been made public.
“Each must pay 50,000 zlotys (11,600 euros) bail within a week [...] If they pay, they will be released, if they don’t pay, they won’t be released,” Piotr Jaszke, a lawyer for one of the suspects, told Reuters.
He added that the suspects could ask for an extension of the bail deadline. The bail is now set to be paid by October 16.
Ewa Leszczynska-Furtak, spokeswoman for the Warsaw Court of Appeal, confirmed this information to the AFP news agency.
Both suspects will be banned from leaving Poland and, if released, will have to appear regularly before the police.
“There is no fear of the suspects escaping or going into hiding,” Leszczynska-Furtak is quoted by AFP.
Jaszke told AFP of his defendant that “surely his family and his closest ones will organise themselves in order to pay this amount as soon as possible”.
In June, the court ruled that the men could not be handed over to Lithuania because they are also facing criminal proceedings in Poland.
Last month, the prosecutor’s office announced that a Russian national had been arrested in Poland on charges of organising the attack on Volkov. According to officials, eight suspects are under investigation: six Poles, a Belarusian and a Russian. Four of them have been detained.
The prosecutor’s office identified the Russian national only as Anatoly B. and stated that he was charged with an attack motivated by Volkov’s “political activities”.
The attack has led to a fierce war of words between the two main anti-Kremlin factions of the Russian opposition.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Navalny, accused Leonid Nevzlin, a former vice-president of the oil company Yukos and a close associate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of ordering the attack.
A similar statement was posted on social media by Volkov himself.
Nevzlin has rejected these accusations.
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