JAILED PUTIN’S CRITIC NAVALNY SAYS HE IS IN A PUNISHMENT CELL

Mon 15 August 2022:

Jailed Alexei Navalny, a politician from the opposition in Russia, claimed on Monday that the jail administration had put him in a punishment cell for breaking a minor rule after he attempted to persuade other prisoners to organize a union.

On Monday, he said on Twitter in a post organised via his lawyers and supporters that he had been put in a punishment cell, initially for three days, for regularly failing to button the top button of his prison uniform which he said was several sizes too small for him.

Navalny is reported to be at the IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo near Vladimir, about 250 km (155 miles) east of Moscow.

There was no immediate comment from the prison authorities.

“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. There’s no ventilation. At night you lie there and feel like a fish on the shore. At 5 a.m. they take away your mattress and pillow … and raise your bunk. At 9 p.m. the bunk is lowered again and the mattress is returned. There’s an iron table, an iron bench, a sink, a hole in the floor and two cameras on the ceiling.”

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

“So they say that unless I ‘reconsider my attitude’ it will become my permanent residence,” he wrote.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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