Supporters of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, who is serving a 19-year prison sentence, said Monday that they have been trying to contact him in vain for almost a week and do not know where he is.
His lawyers went on Friday then Monday to “two penal colonies in the Vladimir region (east of Moscow, Editor’s note) where Alexeï Navalny could be”, but learned “that he was not there”. said its spokesperson Kira Iarmich.
One of these prisons indicated that the opponent “no longer appeared on their registers”, refusing to say “where he had been transferred”, she wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“We still don’t know where Alexei is,” she said. A little earlier, she had indicated that it had been “six days” since her team had heard from him.
In particular, he missed a court hearing at which he was to appear by videoconference, an absence justified by a power outage according to the prison authorities, added Kira Iarmich.
“They’re making fun of us,” she lashed out.
Washington reacted by saying it was “very concerned” by the lack of information regarding Mr. Navalny’s whereabouts, once again calling for his immediate release.
“He should never have been imprisoned in the first place,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, indicating that American authorities were seeking to know more.
Vote against Putin
Until then detained in the Vladimir region, Alexeï Navalny must be transferred according to his new sentence of 19 years in prison for “extremism”, pronounced in August, to a penal colony with a “special regime”.
Transfers from one penal colony to another in Russia often take several weeks of train travel with stages, with detainees’ relatives not being heard from during this time.
“Special regime” colonies, or establishments with the harshest conditions of detention in the Russian prison system, are often located in very isolated regions.
Arrested in January 2021 Alexeï Navalny, 47, has been alternating stays in solitary confinement with more or less strict detention conditions for almost three years.
In early December, Russian authorities initiated new charges of “vandalism” against the charismatic anti-corruption activist, which could add three more years of detention to his sentence.
“Never has a detainee, placed in solitary confinement for more than a year, had such a rich social and political life,” quipped the opponent, who communicates mainly via messages sent to his lawyers and published in line.
Mr. Navalny’s team launched a campaign on social networks last week to call on Russians to vote against Vladimir Putin in the next presidential election scheduled for mid-March 2024.
“We encourage everyone to use the 100 days before the vote to campaign against Putin and his power,” Mr. Navalny’s account on X said on Thursday.
Alexei Navalny narrowly escaped death when he was poisoned in August 2020, spending several months convalescing in Germany.
Russia has been facing increasing repression of critical voices for several years, which significantly accelerated after the start of the Russian assault on Ukraine in February 2022.
Almost all major opponents have been imprisoned or driven into exile and thousands of ordinary Russians prosecuted for expressing their disagreement with the Kremlin, including on social networks.