Navalny staff say police searching his Moscow headquarters

MOSCOW — Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s staff say police are conducting a late-night search at his organization’s headquarters.

Reports of the search began on social media about 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

The Mediazona news website that focuses on political repression and human rights abuses cited a Navalny staff member as saying by telephone that police said they had received a report that pornography was being published at the office.

Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

He later was ordered to serve 2 1/2 years in prison on the grounds that his time in Germany violated a suspended sentence he was handed in a money-laundering and fraud conviction.

The arrest set off large nationwide protests on two weekends in January, in which a total of about 10,000 people reportedly were arrested.

The Associated Press