Missing Russian oppn leader Alexei Navalny found in remote prison colony: Reports

 

TN Ashok

Washington, Dec 25 (IANS) Missing for weeks after his last contact, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been traced to a prison colony north of the Arctic circle, his aides said, the media reported.  

 

Navalny, the leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is currently serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism but his attorneys said they have not been able to reach him since December 6, media reports said .

He was previously imprisoned in Russia's Vladimir region, about 140 miles east of Moscow.

But his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, confirmed on X that he is now imprisoned further north in the Yamalo-Nenetsky region.

"It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world," Navalny's chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, shared on X.

Navalny's advisors had previously warned that the opposition leader was ill as he was kept in an unventilated cell and denied food, USA Today reported.

Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in the Siberian city of Tomsk in August 2020 and later evacuated to Berlin for medical care.

After spending more than one week in a coma and recovering from the assassination attempt, Navalny returned to Moscow on January 17, 2021, and was arrested at passport control for violating the terms of his parole, Today claimed.

He has denied the charges he faces as politically motivated over his anti-Kremlin protests and campaigns against corruption in Russia.

--IANS

ash/pgh