Opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who has been imprisoned in Russia, has been unavailable for six days. This is stated by his employees in social media, according to the Russian independent newspaper The Moscow Times.
Navalny is no longer in the high-security prison IK-6, 23 miles east of Moscow, where he has been serving his sentence. He should instead have been transferred to another prison, but it is unclear which one, according to his spokesperson Kira Jarmysh.
On Friday, Navalny’s close associate, Maria Pevchich, stated that the opposition politician suffered from “a serious health-related incident”.
“Navalny’s life is in great danger. He is in complete isolation right now,” she wrote on X.
“They just mock us”
The opposition politician has not been able to participate in court hearings via video link on Monday, according to the newspaper. Prison officials have blamed Navalny’s absence on “electrical problems”, which have been ongoing since 7 December.
“They just mock us,” writes Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh on X.
“This is the sixth day that we do not know where Aleksej is or what is happening to him,” she writes further.
Imprisoned in 2021
Neither his lawyers nor associates have any information about his state of health or his whereabouts.
Navalny, 47, was jailed in 2021 after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a near-fatal poisoning attack with the nerve agent novichok.
He has been sentenced to a total of more than 30 years in prison, accused of participating in an “extremist group”
Facts: Alexei Navalny
From the beginning best known as an anti-corruption activist. But over time, Alexei Navalny (born 1976) emerged as the main opposition leader in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Has been arrested and convicted repeatedly and banned from standing in general elections.
In August 2020, Navalny became acutely ill during a flight from Tomsk in Siberia. After being treated for several months in a hospital in Germany, where it was established that he had been poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok, he returned to Russia on January 17, 2021.
He was immediately arrested at the airport and subsequently sentenced to prison for breaching bail, in what is widely seen as a politically-directed process.
Last year he was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted of embezzlement and contempt of court, and in August this year he was sentenced to a further 19 years in prison for extremism.
The sentences against Navalny are considered by both his supporters and the outside world to be politically motivated and the regime’s way of trying to silence criticism of the Kremlin. (TT)