[ad_1]
The condition of the Russian opposition politician. Alexei Navalny he has deteriorated since he was sent to a penal colony ten miles from Moscow.
His defense attorneys have tried unsuccessfully to see him.
– We have been waiting for three hours outside the penal colony, says Alexei Navalny’s lawyer Olga Michajlova by phone from the city of Pokrov, where Navalny has been serving his prison sentence since mid-March.
On Wednesday, Olga Michajlova and her colleague sat outside all day without meeting with their client.
– We are concerned about his life and health, she says.
Alexei Navalny complained of back pain late last week and the prison doctor prescribed two pain relievers. On Tuesday, he is said to have testified that his legs began to go numb. The opposition politician was subjected to an assassination attempt in August last year, for poisoning with the nerve agent Novitjok. During the fall, he was in Germany for treatment and, upon his return to Russia in January, he was arrested, accused of violating the rules of a previous suspended sentence. In early February, a Moscow court converted the sentence into a real one, and for a couple of weeks he has been serving his sentence (2.5 years in prison) in a penal colony in the Vladimir region, east of the capital.
During the arrest, Navalny was classified as “prone to escape” and is therefore also under special control in the penal colony and wakes up, according to defense lawyer Olga Mikhailovna, once an hour at night.
However, the Russian prison authority claims, according to the Interfax news agency, that Alexei Navalny’s health is good. The Pokrov penal colony is described as one of the strictest in Russia with harsh discipline, very little time of its own, and limited right to visit.
