The “life and health” of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny in prison he is in danger, his collaborators declare in a complaint addressed to the prison administration and the office of the attorney general published online today. The activist explained that he was woken “eight times a night” by his captors. “They deprive me of sleep, it is a de facto use of sleep deprivation as torture,” wrote Navalnyj, asking for “treatment”.
“His health is obviously extremely problematic for me,” he told indie TV Dozhd his lawyer Olga Mikhailova who only yesterday managed to meet Navalnyj in prison. The opponent would suffer from “severe pain” in his back and right leg and on Wednesday evening he would undergo an MRI scan at a “public hospital” without receiving a diagnosis. A neurologist would have prescribed ibuprofen alone, a common anti-inflammatory.
The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) of the Vladimir region, near Moscow, where Navalnyj is imprisoned, denied health problems, assuring that medical examinations were carried out and that Navalnyj’s condition was “considered stable and satisfactory”. “We do not follow the case, the monitoring of prisoners’ health is the responsibility of the prison authorities”, said the Kremlin spokesman. Dmitry Peskov.
The forty-four-year-old survived Novichok poisoning. Ended in a coma and transferred to Germany, after five months of convalescence, he returned to Moscow last January, but was arrested as soon as he landed. Sentenced in February to two and a half years in prison for a fraud case dating back to 2014 judged “politically motivated” by the European Court of Human Rights, he has been detained since the beginning of March in the Pokrovskaya Ik-2 penal colony, 100 kilometers from the Russian capital. Since then, Navalny has only posted two messages on Instagram.
“I ask for the immediate release of my husband, Alexei Navalnyj, and that he be given the opportunity to be treated by doctors he trusts,” the wife of the Russian opponent wrote on Instagram. Julia Navalnaya. “Putin illegally pushed him to prison. Pushed him because he is afraid of political competition and wants to sit on the throne for the rest of his life. What is happening before our eyes is personal revenge and retaliation against a person. He has to be stopped immediately “.
To ask for its release, the Anti-Corruption Fund has created the free.navalnyj.com site where it is collecting subscriptions for a new demonstration. Once 500 thousand subscriptions have been reached, the place and date of the event will be announced.
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