Amnesty International restores Alexei Navalny’s “prisoner of conscience” status Amnesty International (AI) announced May 7 that it was restoring its “prisoner of conscience” status to Alexei Navalny. The organization had stripped the imprisoned anti-Putin oppositionist of this title in late February due to his history of engaging in hate speech. Amnesty’s reversal has nothing to do with any change in Navalny’s outlook. It is entirely a product of the fraudulent efforts by US and European imperialism to present the right-wing politician and bigot as some sort of crusader for “democracy.” Alexei Navalny [Source: Wikimedia Commons] Navalny has a long record of right-wing politics. In 2007, he left the opposition party Yabloko, which advocates unfettered free markets and has close ties with the US and joined forces with the National Bolshevik Zakhar Prilepin to found the National Russian Liberation Movement (NAROD). NAROD’s manifesto was a classic far-right combination of criticism of elites and appeals for national and ethnic revival.