Navalny transferred from penal colony, his whereabouts unknown, his spokesperson says

Alexei Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh reports that the leader of the Anti-Corruption Foundation has been transferred from the penal colony IK-2 in Pokrov.

“The lawyer who came to see him was held at the colony entrance until 2 p.m., and was told there was no such inmate. Where Alexei is now and where they are taking him, we do not know,” she wrote.

According to Yarmysh, neither the lawyers nor Alexei’s relatives were informed in advance about his transfer: “Rumor has it he was to be transferred to the high-security colony IK-6 ”Melekhovo“, but whether he is actually being taken there and when is still impossible to tell.”

“The problem with the transfer to another colony is not only that a high-security colony is much scarier. All the time we don’t know where Alexei is, he is face to face with the system that has already tried to kill him. So we need to find him as soon as possible,” Yarmysh wrote.

Navalny was sent to a penal colony after the Simonovsky district court changed his suspended sentence in the “Yves Rocher” case to a real one of 3.5 years in prison in early February. The formal reason was that the oppositionist failed to report to the penal commission on the appointed days, and since August 2020, after being poisoned with Novichok and transported to Germany, he stopped showing up at the inspector’s office altogether.

Navalny and his lawyers assured the court that the oppositionist could not have physically visited the inspector as he had been treated, first as an inpatient and then as an outpatient, in a German clinic, of which he had notified the penitentiary inspectorate.

On March 22 the court sentenced Alexey Navalny to 9 years of strict regime in the “fraud and contempt of the court” case. The Lefortovo court session took place right in the penal colony IK2 in Pokrov, where Navalny was serving his sentence in the “Yves Rocher” case. The prosecutor Nadezhda Tikhonova had asked for 13 years in a strict regime penal colony. A day earlier, Vladimir Putin promoted the judge who handled Navalny’s case.