The lawyer for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny confirms that his client has been moved from a Moscow jail to one of Russia’s most notorious prison camps to serve his sentence. Navalny, who survived a poisoning attempt, is serving a two-year six-month sentence for defying probation terms while he was hospitalized for the poisoning.
The facility, about 60 miles from Moscow, is known as a “red zone” prison, defined by the harsh manual labor prisoners must carry out. Activist Konstantin Kotov was freed from the prison after 18 months and told The New York Times he was constantly subjected to intimidation by guards and punishments for not saluting officers.
He was also penalized with isolation for borrowing another inmate’s gloves after the pair his relatives sent were confiscated. “Alexey is going to have a very difficult time,” Kotov said. “The administration keeps tabs on your every move.” The head of the Russian Prison Service told the state-run Tass news service that there was “no threat” to Navalny’s “health or life” in prison.
Source: The Daily Beast and DW and Bloomberg