(Reuters) -A Russian financial watchdog has placed three lawyers for jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny on a register of "terrorists and extremists", according to its website.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were arrested on Oct. 13 on suspicion of belonging to an "extremist group".
The watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, is responsible for countering money-laundering and terrorist financing and can freeze the bank accounts of those on the list, which contains 13,612 people and 547 entities.
"They have children - Kobzev has three kids - and how are their mothers supposed to support them? Those involved in this reprisal should burn in hell," Navalny aide Lyubov Sobol posted on the social media platform X.
Navalny's supporters said the lawyers had been detained to deepen his isolation in jail, where he is serving sentences totalling more than 30 years.
They said the targeting of lawyers defending people speaking out against the authorities and the war in Ukraine crossed a new threshold in the repression of dissent under President Vladimir Putin.
Two of Navalny's other lawyers, Alexander Fedulov and Olga Mikhailova, have fled Russia for fear of being arrested.
Kobzev, Sergunin and Liptser have not been convicted of any crime. They are currently being held in custody until Dec. 13.
Navalny himself was convicted in August of new charges relating to alleged extremist activity and sentenced to an additional 19 years on top of the 11-1/2 years he was already serving. He rejects all the charges as politically motivated and designed to silence his criticism of the Kremlin.
Defending protesters and opposition figures comes with considerable risks in wartime Russia, where even schoolchildren and pensioners have been punished for dissent over the war.
Some lawyers have been prosecuted for speaking out against the invasion, which Russia calls a "special military operation" and dozens have been stripped of licences.
Nonetheless, the legal defence group OVD-Info says many young lawyers have joined its ranks to defend activists and dissenters.
Authorities say they are applying the law against troublemakers encouraged by the West to destroy their nation, and deny abuse of detainees.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Filipp Lebedev; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
