Jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny ‘is thrown in to solitary confinement at Russian penal colony for failing to fasten the top button of his prison uniform and urging inmates to form a trade union’

• Last week Navalny announced he was setting up a labour union for convicts
• Navalny was put into solitary after being told he unbuttoned his prison clothes
• A mattress and a pillow are brought at 9pm and taken away at 5am in his cell
• The only possessions at Navalny’s disposal are ‘a mug and a book’, the post said 

Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Monday that prison authorities had thrown him into a punishment cell for refusing to fasten his top button and encouraging fellow inmates to form a trade union.

A post on Monday said Navalny was summoned by prison officials and told that video surveillance showed he regularly unbuttoned his prison clothes while in the work area. 

It was not immediately clear how the politician got the information out.

During his time behind bars, his social media accounts have been regularly updated with posts about life in prison.

Last week he announced setting up a labour union for convicts, of which he said he was the only member at the time.

Navalny said the union has successfully argued for replacing backless stools with chairs in the prison’s sewing shop where he works.

According to the post on Monday, the union activity was the real reason prison officials sent him to solitary confinement.

‘The Kremlin wants to see its gulag consisting of voiceless slaves. And here I am, instead of begging for pardon, uniting some people and demanding that some laws be observed,’ he said.

Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court – charges he says were designed to silence his opposition. On Tuesday he was secretly moved to a high-security prison, prompting a scramble by his supporters to find him

The facility is known for the brutal treatment of inmates. Last year, Mediazona published accusations that the correctional colony was riddled with torture and sexual violence.

Local media eventually reported that he was at Melekhovo colony in Vladimir region, Russia

President Vladimir Putin is accused of using harsh tactics to silence opponents, and undercover operatives have used nerve agents and other poisons to target dissidents

‘This certainly characterises me as a hopeless villain. So, a decision has been made to send me to punitive solitary confinement’ for three days, the post read.

If Navalny ‘doesn’t change (his) attitude’, his stay there would be extended, prison officials told him, according to the post.

The post described solitary as ‘the most severe punishment in the legal prison hierarchy’ – a small concrete cell, which ‘is very hot and there is almost no air’.

There is a metal bed attached to a wall, and a mattress and a pillow are only brought at 9pm and taken away at 5am.

‘Visitation is now allowed, letters are not allowed, parcels are not allowed. It is the only place in prison where even smoking is not allowed,’ the post read.

The only possessions at Navalny’s disposal are ‘a mug and a book’, the post said, and he has a pen and some paper for just over an hour a day.

The book he is reading is 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, he added. 

‘The solitary confinement cell is a 2.5 x 3 metre concrete kennel. Most of the time it’s unbearable in there because it’s cold and damp. There’s water on the floor. I got the beach version – it’s very hot and there’s almost no air,’ Navalny wrote.

‘The window is tiny, but the walls are too thick for any air flow – even the cobwebs don’t move.’

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critic inside Russia, is serving an 11-1/2 year sentence after being found guilty of parole violations and fraud and contempt of court charges.

He says all the charges were fabricated as a pretext to jail him in order to thwart his political ambitions.

The 46-year-old, who returned to Russia in 2021 from Germany where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him in Siberia with a Soviet-era nerve agent, was moved in June to a high-security penal colony farther from Moscow.

Russia denies trying to kill him.

A view shows the IK-2 corrective penal colony, where Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny serves his jail term, in the town of Pokrov, April 6

Law enforcement officers stand guard near a security checkpoint of the IK-2 corrective penal colony,

Navalny was reportedly moved to the IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo near Vladimir in June, about 250km east of Moscow.  

President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, he was arrested in January 2021 on returning from Germany, where he had been recuperating from nerve-agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

He received a two-and-a-half year sentence for violating the conditions of his parole while outside Russia.

In March, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court, allegations he rejected as a politically motivated attempt by Russian authorities to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.

Navalny said he was due a visit in September from his relatives, but that no such visits were allowed for people in solitary confinement.

There was no immediate comment from the prison authorities. 

Source: Read Full Article