Russian authorities claimed Sunday that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is in a prison swarm in Vladimir area, 3 hrs outside Moscow, where he will spend the next two as well as a fifty percent years.
4 former inmates of chastening swarm IK-2– which Russian state media have actually recognized as the establishment where the opposition leader will certainly do his time– told The Moscow Times that it is just one of Russia’s most difficult jails.
” This is, by any action, an exceptionally stringent jail. They attempt to manage your every step, your every thought,” stated Konstantin Kotov, who invested two years in IK-2 after being apprehended during Moscow’s summertime 2019 political election protests and also founded guilty under a questionable law criminalizing “duplicated” involvement in unapproved rallies.
Kotov clarified that Russia has 4 sorts of penal nests, each with a different regimen relying on the extent of prisoners’ criminal activities.
Navalny’s prison has a so-called “ordinary regimen,” with prisoners housed in large barracks with as much as 150 beds in each. According to Kotov, problems in IK-2 are a lot more in line with those seen in “stringent regimen” penal colonies.
” Inmates who have hung around in different jails across Russia informed me this was the hardest one they have actually been in. It definitely felt like a high-security prison for hard crooks,” he said.
The decision to move Navalny to IK-2 was met worry by human rights workers who monitor the rights of detainees in jails throughout Russia.
Pyotr Kuryanov, a lawyer at the Defence of Prisoners’ Rights Foundation NGO said he was shocked when he initially listened to the information that Navalny was to be transferred to the Vladimir prison.
” It’s completely lawless there. They will break you. Poor things have actually been going on there for a long period of time, some of it subjected by Vladimir Pereverzin 10 years earlier,” he stated, referring to a former manager at the Yukos oil company that, like his manager Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was prosecuted on corruption costs as well as spent seven years behind bars.
Pereverzin’s last 2 years behind bars, from 2010 to 2012 were invested in IK-2, which he defined in a narrative.
In a phone conversation from Berlin, where he currently lives, he said Navalny was in for a “tough time.”
” The conditions were definitely grim there. The jail is alongside an overload, it is chilly as well as wet with poor food. It was a violent location back then.”
” Like torture”
Most of the prisoners in IK-2 are there on medicine and also theft fees, claimed lawyer Kuryanov. Nonetheless, he included that the nest periodically organizes prominent political prisoners, consisting of Pereverzin, Kotov and also the nationalist activist Dmitry Demushkin who spent two years in IK-2 for prompting disgust.
In an exchange of text with The Moscow Times, Demushkim defined his time in IK-2 as being “like abuse.”
He said he invested his initial 8 months in the jail in its infamous 2nd industry, recognized amongst prisoners as SUKA (Russian for bitch), where problems were particularly extreme.
” I was restricted to speak to other inmates, they were prohibited to look at me, my hands were constantly behind my back when I ran out my cell. It was restricted to go to the local jail church, to do any type of showing off activities.”
Both Pereverzin and Kotov said they did not experience serious physical violence from guards, which they believed was due to their public profile, an element that ought to maintain Navalny from being literally assaulted.
” The guards will not want a nationwide detraction,” said Pereverzin.
All 3 previous detainees, however, stated they had actually seen and also come across other inmates being defeated by guards and various other prisoners.
Russian jails have actually been pestered by torture detractions for years. Just last week, the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta released video clip footage asserting to show the ruthless torment of Russian prisoners– one of whom died shortly after the video was recorded– in Yarosvlav, a region surrounding Vladimir.
Alexei, a 57-year-old previous inmate that asked that his last name be kept, invested 2 years in IK-2 for burglary till his release last summer season. He told The Moscow Times that he was consistently beaten by both guards as well as prisoners throughout his time in jail.
” There is a whole system in place that permits daily physical violence and also embarrassment,” Alexei recalled, adding that he really hoped the newly found focus on the prison would certainly bring several of the claimed abuses to light.
” Maybe something goodwill come out of this,” he claimed.
The management of IK-2 did not respond to The Moscow Times’ requests for remark.
Mental seclusion
On his arrival, Navalny will certainly invest 2 weeks in quarantine, which is located in the notorious 2nd sector. After that, much will certainly depend on the type of barracks he is sent to.
Kotov believes the authorities chose to place Navalny in IK-2 because it is effective at “mentally isolating” political detainees.
He indicated the fact that the swarm does not allow e-mails, and claimed prison guards would take “weeks as well as occasionally months” to go through as well as process each letter he received or sent out by message. Throughout his time there, Kotov said he would certainly never obtain more than a hr a day to reply to the several letters of assistance he stated he got.
In jail, Navalny is likewise most likely to locate himself separated from the various other detainees.
” They prohibited other inmates to talk to you. They want to make you really feel alone,” stated Kotov.
” All of this is suggested to use you down emotionally,” he included.
Pereverzin resembled Kotov, saying that during his time there a years earlier, other detainees were instructed to “prevent him like the plague.”
Nationalist Demushkin claimed guards likewise went to fantastic sizes to restrict his flow of information while he remained in IK-2.
” We were not enabled to talk about politics or religious beliefs,” he said, including that convicts were only permitted to see Russia’s state-controlled Channel 1 television station.
Recalling at his time in jail, Kotov now thinks he could have been a “examination situation” for exactly how to separate a popular political detainee like Navalny.
” But I am sure Alexei is solid sufficient to handle whatever comes his way” he claimed.