Navalny’s team says he has vanished in Russia’s prison system
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Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been removed from the penal colony where he had been imprisoned since the middle of last year and his current whereabouts are unknown, his allies said on Monday.
Navalny aides have been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, after he was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison on top of 11-1/2 years he was already serving.The process of moving prisoners by rail across Russia’s vast territory can take weeks, with lawyers and family unable to obtain information about their location and well-being until they reach their destination. It was unclear if Navalny was already in transit to a new prison.Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said staff at the IK-6 facility in Melekhovo, 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow, had told his lawyer waiting outside that the opposition leader was no longer among its inmates.
“We don’t know where he is right now. He can be in any colony of special regime and there are about around 30 of them in Russia, all over Russia,” she told Reuters. “We will try to go to every colony there is and look for him”.
The United States said it was deeply concerned.
“He should be released immediately. He should never have been jailed in the first place,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.
