© Photo by George Alburi (@alburov).

Moscow City Court has rejected Aleksei Navalny’s request for a supervisory appeal against the decision of Moscow City Court's Board of Civil Cases concerning the retraction of statements contained in a video posted on his blog, and the payment of compensation to entrepreneur Vladen Stepanov.

At the same time information about the ruling decision, dated to the beginning of July, has only just now appeared on the court’s website - with a typo in the blogger’s surname. Meanwhile, neither Navalny himself nor his representatives have received the documents back from the court, reports a correspondent for the Open Information News Agency.

“My guess is that most probably the materials are still with the Moscow City Court. The judge ordered them to be returned to Aleksei Navalny, and the secretariat did not send them for some reason. Then the ‘July’ message appeared on the website which in July and August (I checked personally) was certainly not there,” says Ramil Akhmetgaliev, one of Navalny’s legal representatives from Agora Human Rights Association. “We must now write to Moscow City Court citing the website, and providing a printout of the screenshot, to show that the appeal which was apparently ‘sent back’ to us back in July has not reached us yet for some technical reasons.”

On 17 October 2011 Moscow’s Lublin district court issued a ruling in favour of Vladlen Stepanov and ordered Aleksei Navalny to pay him 100,000 roubles and issue a retraction of statements made on a video posted on Navlny’s blog which discussed the involvement of officials in the theft of 5.4 million roubles of public money, referring to ex-tax inspector Olga Stepanova and her husband. On 22 December 2011 Moscow City Court rejected Navalny’s appeal and the decision entered into force. In June 2012 Navalny made an application to the European Court of Human Rights in connection with the violation of his “right to a fair trial” and “freedom of expression” (Articles 6 and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms). At this time the blogger’s lawyers also filed the supervisory appeal with Moscow City Court.