Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been tracked down to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle his spokeswoman said on Monday a
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been tracked down to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle, his spokeswoman said on Monday, after supporters lost touch with him for more than two weeks.
Navalny, 47, was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 kilometers (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said. Navalny’s lawyer managed to see him on Monday, Yarmysh said.
‚This prison will be much worse than the one that was before,‘ Yarmysh told Reuters TV in Vilnius via video call. ‚They are trying to make his life as unbearable as it possibly can be.‘
‚They definitely try to isolate Alexei and to make it more difficult to access him,‘ said Yarmysh, who refused to disclose her location due to security concerns.
Navalny’s allies, who had been preparing for his expected transfer to a ’special regime‘ colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, said he had not been seen by his lawyers since Dec. 6 and raised the alarm about his fate.
Navalny’s new home, known as ‚the Polar Wolf‘ colony, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia.
