- Alexei Nalvani, a critic of Vladimir Putin, is said to have been transferred to a notorious prison.
- IK-6 has a reputation for ill-treating prisoners, including suspicious deaths, rapes, intoxications and beatings.
- “There is no law there,” Nalvani’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmish tweeted about the prison.
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Although his allies and representatives could not confirm his exact whereabouts, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported that Alexei Navalny, a staunch critic of Vladimir Putin, had been transferred from a prison colony to a high-security prison known for abuse.
“Abuse and torture are being used against prisoners in many Russian prisons, but the IK-6 in Melekhovo is a monstrous place even by such insane standards,” Navalny spokesman Kira Yarmish tweeted in May, citing rumors that Navalny could be end up there while serving an additional sentence of imprisonment on charges widely condemned as politically motivated.
The Melekhovo prison, east of Moscow, has a notorious reputation for suspicious deaths, as well as brutal rapes and ill-treatment of prisoners.
In a recorded video, a former prisoner in IC-6 described being held by six masked men who, in an attempt to force him to give up his lawyer, beat and raped him with a truncheon. Another prisoner, who was denied food and regularly beaten, tried to commit suicide to escape the horrific treatment inside.
Other inmates who spoke out against ill-treatment in prison have died, with officers hiding the cause of death, despite evidence of violence against their remains.
Nalvani, who was twice poisoned for his criticism of the Kremlin, was sentenced to 13 years in prison in March and charged with embezzling money through his foundation. He was initially serving his sentence in a Russian penal colony, 2, before being transferred this week.
“There is no law there,” Yarmish tweeted about the prison. “And this is where Putin wants to put Navalny, that he is not afraid of him and is telling the truth.”
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