Alexei Navalny's entourage has not known where the Russian opponent is for six days. After several unsuccessful attempts to visit the activist, the Federal Penitentiary Service has informed his lawyers that he is no longer in the IK-6 prison in Melekhovo, about 600 kilometers north of Moscow, where he was currently serving a 19-year sentence. years in prison under strict solitary confinement. According to the dissident's spokesperson, Kira Yarmish, the last time Navalny was seen he was recovering from fainting.
“Today, like last Friday, the lawyers tried to access IK-6 and IK-7, the two prisons in the Vladimir region where Alexei Navalny could be held. In both they were informed simultaneously that he is not there. We don't know where Alexei is,” the opponent's representative revealed on X (formerly Twitter).
Other members of Navalny's platform are currently in exile. The government agency Rosfinmonitoring raised the alleged dangerousness of the dissident and two prominent members of his team, Leonid Volkov and Iván Zhdanov, considering that his status went from “extremist” to “terrorist.”
“They refuse to say where they have taken him,” added Yarmish, concerned about the opponent's situation. Navalny should have participated during these days in several sessions of another new trial by videoconference, but he never appeared. “Jail officials say the power has not been fixed since December 7th. “They make fun of us, it is already the sixth day that we do not know where Alexei is or what is happening to him,” Yarmish denounced this Monday.
Navalny is currently serving 19 years in prison under the accusation of having formed “an extremist organization” with his Platform Against Corruption. This is the most serious of the cases opened against him. The last one was known on October 1, when a criminal case was opened against the dissident under the accusation of “vandalism.”
His closest circle gave the first alarm signal on December 7. According to Navalni's spokesperson, a week before his disappearance she had fainted in his cell. “We don't know what it was about him, but given that they deprived him of food, kept him in an unventilated punishment cell, and reduced his walking time to a minimum, it seems that he fainted from hunger. After that incident, the lawyers saw that Alexei was relatively well,” she then stated in X.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
The dissident's circle lost contact with him a day before launching a campaign against Vladimir Putin's candidacy in the presidential elections scheduled for three months. Posters appeared in several cities in Russia calling for a vote for any other electoral candidate in the next presidential elections, which will last three days, until March 17, 2024, and will include controversial electronic voting for the first time.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Navalni39s #entourage #reports #missing #days