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Alexei Nalvany, a critic of Vladimir Putin, is said to have been transferred to a notorious prison.
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IK-6 has a reputation for inmate abuse, including suspicious deaths, rapes, druggings, and beatings.
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“There is no law there,” Nalvany’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh tweeted about the prison.
Though his allies and representatives cannot confirm his exact whereabouts, Russian state-sponsored media agency TASS reported that Alexei Navalny, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, was moved from a prison colony to a high-security prison infamous for abuse.
“Abuse and torture are used against inmates in many Russian prisons, but IK-6 in Melekhovo is a monstrous place even by such insane standards,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said in a tweet in May, addressing rumors that Navalny could end up there while serving an additional prison sentence on charges widely decried as politically motivated.
The prison in Melekhovo, east of Moscow, has a notorious reputation for suspicious deaths, as well as brutal rapes and abuse of inmates.
In a recorded video, one former prisoner at IK-6 described being held down by six masked people who, in an attempt to get him to give up his lawyer, beat him and raped him with a baton. Another prisoner, who was denied food and regularly beaten, tried to kill himself to escape the horrific treatment inside.
Other inmates who have spoken out against abuses inside the prison have ended up dead, with officials concealing the cause of death, despite evidence of abuse on their remains.
Nalvany, who has been poisoned twice for his criticism of the Kremlin, was sentenced to 13 years behind bars in March and accused of embezzling money through his foundation. He was originally serving his sentence in Russian penal colony No. 2 before being moved this week.
“There is no law there,” Yarmysh tweeted about the prison. “And that’s where Putin wants to put Navalny for not being afraid of him and telling the truth.”
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