Jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a maximum-security prison after his prison term was extended to nine years, his lawyer said Tuesday.
The Kremlin’s most vocal domestic foe, Navalny had been at a penal colony in the Vladimir region city of Pokrov east of Moscow since February 2021.
His transfer comes in accordance with his March 2022 sentencing to nine years in a maximum-security colony on fraud charges that he and his allies have described as politically motivated and an effort to keep him in prison for life.
But his legal team and top associates said they were not informed in advance of his transfer and do not know which prison he has been moved to.
“Today, Navalny’s lawyer in the colony in Pokrov was told that Navalny was no longer being held there; he was transferred to a strict-regime colony, but we were not told which one,” lawyer Olga Mikhailova told the state-run TASS news agency.
“There were rumors that he was going to be transferred to the high-security penal colony IK-6 ‘Melekhovo,’ but it is impossible to know when (and if) he will actually arrive there,” his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Twitter.
“The problem with his transfer to another colony is not only that the high-security colony is much scarier. As long as we don’t know where Alexei is, he remains one-on-one with the system that has already tried to kill him, so our main task now is to locate him as soon as possible,” Yarmysh added.
Navalny was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison in February 2021 upon returning to Russia after recovering abroad from a near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on President Vladimir Putin.
His arrest sparked nationwide protests that were met with a harsh crackdown.
That summer, Russia outlawed his political and activist networks as “extremist” organizations and most of his allies have since fled abroad to escape prosecution.
Navalny said last month that he has been hit with new charges of “extremism” and “inciting hatred” against authorities, which could see him face another 15 years in prison.
