The Insider: Alexei Navalny was transferred to IK-6 with a strict regime in the Vladimir region. Prisoners of the colony reported torture

Alexei Navalny was transferred to a strict regime colony in Melehovo. He said that they were preparing a “prison within a prison” for him.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears from prison on a video link provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, at a courtroom in Vladimir, Russia, Tuesday, June 7, 2022. AP

Translated from The Insider

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been transferred from penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov (IK-2) to a strict regime colony IK-6 in Melehovo, Vladimir Region. It is reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the chairman of the Public Monitoring Commission of the region Sergei Yazhan.

IK-6 is known for reports of torture of prisoners. So, in 2021, Pavel Zotov, who was in prison in the Vladimir region from 2009 to 2021, spoke about bullying. He recalled that in IK-6 convicts in police clothes laid him on the floor, undressed him, tied his hands and feet, and beat him with a truncheon on his heels and groin. In December 2021, 27-year-old prisoner Zhobir Zhuraev said that guards and prisoners collaborating with the administration systematically beat him, tortured him, starved him, and threatened him with rape.

On June 14, Alexei Navalny's press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, reported that the founder of the FBK had been taken away from colony IK-2 in Pokrov.

“The lawyer who came to see him was kept at the checkpoint until 2 pm, and then they said: ‘There is no such convict. Where Alexey is now and what colony he is being taken to, we don’t know, ”she wrote.

According to Yarmysh, neither lawyers nor Alexei's relatives were informed about his transfer in advance.

“The problem with being transferred to another colony is not only that a strict regime colony is much worse. All the while, while we do not know where Alexey is, he remains alone with the system, which has already tried to kill him. Therefore, now the main task is to find him as soon as possible, ”wrote Yarmysh.

Navalny was sent to a colony after the Simonovsky District Court changed his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case to a real sentence of 3.5 years in early February. The formal reason was that the oppositionist did not come to the penitentiary commission to report on the appointed days, but since August 2020, after he was poisoned by Novichok and transported to Germany, he stopped appearing at the inspector at all.

Navalny and his lawyers assured the court that the oppositionist was physically unable to visit the inspector, as he was the first inpatient and then outpatient treatment in a German clinic and notified the penitentiary inspectorate about this.

On March 22, the court sentenced Alexei Navalny to 9 years of strict regime in the case of "fraud and insulting the court." The visiting session of the Lefortovo Court took place right in the penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov, where Navalny is already serving his sentence in the Yves Rocher case. Prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova requested 13 years in a strict regime colony for him. The day before, Vladimir Putin promoted the judge in charge of Navalny's case.