Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has disappeared into the tangle of the Russian prison system. He is no longer in prison number 6 in the village of Melejovo, Vladimir region. There are no clues to his whereabouts and they haven’t heard from him for almost a week.
The imprisoned Russian dissident’s team has raised the alarm: they claim that Neither they nor their lawyers have heard from them in six days. Last week they refused to allow a lawyer to visit him in the neighborhood.
Navalny, who fulfills a sentence of 19 years Accused of extremism, he was due to appear in court this Monday via videoconference, but his intervention was cancelled. Prison officials alleged electrical problems. Later, it was reported that he was no longer there. “They refuse to say where he was taken”denounces Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh.
Navalny is pending transfer to a “special regime” prison, the most severe level of the Russian prison system, after he was sentenced in August to another 19 years in prison, in addition to the 11 and a half he was already serving. According to Yarmysh, lawyers have also not been able to access Navalny in recent days.
The process of transferring prisoners by rail in Russia can take weeks. It is common for relatives and family members to not receive information about their whereabouts and state of health until the prisoner reaches his or her destination. The size of the country, combined with the location of penal colonies on the periphery, means that prisoners face journeys of thousands of kilometres.