Russian opponent transferred from prison to unknown location

“They didn’t tell anyone where he was taken. Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny was transferred Thursday from his Moscow prison, where he had been held since his arrest on his return to Russia in mid-January, to an unknown destination, one of his lawyers, Olga Mikhailova, told AFP , suggesting that he might have gone to the penal colony where he will serve a two-and-a-half-year sentence.

Russian justice last week confirmed the sentence of the 44-year-old opponent, in a fraud case dating from 2014 that he and many capitals and NGOs denounce as political. He was arrested on January 17, on his return from Germany where he had spent almost five months in convalescence to recover from a poisoning of which he accuses the Kremlin.

Concern of his relatives

A close collaborator of Alexey Navalny, Leonid Volkov, asserted on Twitter that the opponent’s family had not been informed of his whereabouts either. “I recall once again that by virtue of a binding decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Alexeï Navalny should be immediately released”, he added.

The opponent’s arrest sparked major protests in Russia, to which the authorities responded with the arrest of more than 10,000 people. Most of his collaborators were also arrested. Last week, Alexeï Navalny was also fined for “defamation” against a veteran of the Second World War and several other court cases await him, including a fraud investigation, punishable by 10 years in prison.