is confirmed. The opponent of the Kremlin Alexeï Navalny has indeed been transferred to the penal colony where he must serve a sentence of two and a half years of detention, announced Friday the head of the Russian prison service (FSIN). On Thursday, lawyers and relatives of the Kremlin critic announced his departure from the Moscow detention center where he had been held since his arrest.
“He was transferred to the place where he is supposed to be by court decision,” said Alexander Kalashnikov, quoted by Russian news agencies, adding that he does not weigh on Alexey Navalny “no threat to his life or his health “. The opponent “will carry out his sentence under absolutely normal conditions”, he said, assuring that “Alexeï Navalny, if he wishes, will take part in production activities”.
Prison camps sometimes located far from everything
A legacy of the Soviet Union, most prison sentences in Russia are served in prison camps sometimes located far from everything. Prisoners’ work, usually in sewing or furniture-making workshops, is often compulsory there. A spokesperson for the FSIN explained to Agence France-Presse that she could not give details on the place of detention of Alexeï Navalny, not having the right to reveal personal data on the detainees. The opponent’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, for his part said he was not aware of the location of his client.
Russian justice last week confirmed the sentence of the 44-year-old anti-corruption activist in a fraud case dating from 2014 that he and many Western capitals and NGOs denounce as political. Alexeï Navalny was arrested on January 17 on his return from Germany, where he had spent almost five months in convalescence to recover from a poisoning he accuses the Kremlin of. His arrest sparked major protests in Russia, to which authorities responded with more than 11,000 arrests, usually followed by fines and short prison terms. Most of the opponent’s collaborators were also arrested.
Hateful comments made in the 2000s
Alexeï Navalny was also fined for “defamation” and several other court cases await him, including an investigation for fraud, punishable by ten years in prison.
A scandal erupted this week after the decision of the NGO Amnesty International to no longer consider Alexeï Navalny as a “prisoner of conscience” because of past hate speech, while continuing to demand his release. In the 2000s, Alexeï Navalny regularly made racist remarks to criticize migrants from Central Asia or the Russian Muslim republics. He has since smoothed out his speech but has never apologized for the statements.
Relatives of the opponent accused the NGO of having yielded to a campaign of provocation, his team again accusing Amnesty International on Friday of playing the “voluntary assistants of the dictator”.
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