Amnesty International restores Alexei Navalny’s prisoner of conscience status

Amnesty International has apologized to the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny for stripping him of its “prisoner of conscience” status and said it would restore the designation, The Guardian reported. 

Amnesty announced on 24 February that it would stop referring to Russia’s most prominent opposition activist as a prisoner of conscience on the grounds that in the past he had made comments that qualified as advocacy of hatred.

“Following careful evaluation Amnesty International has decided to re-designate Alexei Navalny as a ‘Prisoner of Conscience’,” it said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Amnesty said the Russian government and its supporters had used the 24 February decision to further violate the rights of Navalny.