Alexej Navalny suffers from constant isolation and a lack of medical care in a Russian prison camp. His team and a UN special rapporteur speak of torture.
According to his own statements, the well-known Kremlin opponent Alexej Navalny has been put in a cramped solitary cell in a Russian penal camp for the 15th time.
“Yesterday at eight o’clock in the evening I was released from the isolation cell. Today at 9.30 a.m. I’m back in it,” Navalny said about his team on Twitter. He has already spent a total of 165 days in the two by three meter small room, where the conditions are particularly tough. Prisoners cannot buy additional food there or be visited by relatives.
The supporters of the 46-year-old have been complaining about Navalny’s deteriorating health for a long time. They are also convinced that the reasons he has been repeatedly placed in solitary confinement since last summer are only used to torture him psychologically and break his will.
The Special Rapporteur of the UN High Commissioner on Inhumane Treatment, Alice Jill Edwards, also described the constant isolation as a form of torture. “I am concerned by Mr. Navalny’s deteriorating health and the apparent lack of satisfactory diagnosis and medical treatment,” she said.
For more than two years, Navalny has been in a prison camp about 260 kilometers northeast of Moscow, which is known for its harsh prison conditions. He was convicted by a Russian court for alleged fraud, but internationally the prominent opponent of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin is considered a political prisoner.
Source: Stern
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