Vladimir Kara-Murza during his trial in July last year. — © AP
A few weeks after the temporary disappearance of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza is now also missing.
The 42-year-old Russian-British activist Kara-Murza was arrested last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason and spreading “false information” about the war in Ukraine. He himself has always denied all accusations.
The man, who has already been the target of a poison attack twice and therefore suffers from a nervous disorder, had been held (in solitary confinement) in the IK-6 penal colony in Omsk, Siberia, since September, but according to his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza he was recently taken from there and his whereabouts have been unknown ever since.
This is certainly not the first time that convicted prisoners have disappeared for extended periods while being transported by rail to remote points of the Russian penal system. Last December, opposition leader Alexei Navalny also disappeared from the radar for almost three weeks while he was taken to a penal colony in the Arctic.