Alexei Navalny has gone missing from Russian prison, say allies

[Jilly_in_VA]

Allies of the imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny have said he is missing from the prison where he was serving his time.

His close associates say he is probably being transferred to another prison. In Russia, prison transfers can take days, if not weeks, and are shrouded in secrecy.

“All this time that we don’t know where Alexei is, he is left alone with the system that has already once tried to kill him,” Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said on social media.

Navalny’s closest ally, Leonid Volkov, said on Telegram that the politician’s lawyer went to visit him in prison on Tuesday and was told that “there is no such convict here”. “Where Alexei is now and which prison he is being taken to, we don’t know,” Volkov said.

Navalny, the most determined political foe of Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had been recuperating from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for a parole violation.

In March Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud and contempt of court, charges he rejected as politically motivated and an attempt by the authorities to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.

The judge ordered him to serve the new sentence in a maximum-security prison. He was supposed to be transferred to one after he lost his appeal.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/14/alexei-navalny-has-gone-missing-from-russian-prison-say-allies

Uh-oh

[pandr32]

1. I sure hope he is located

Putin wants him dead.

[hlthe2b]

2. He's got all the courage in the world, but Putin has few incentives to keep him alive.

Heart-breaking and beyond tragic.

[greenjar_01]

3. Image taken immediately before he disappeared