NEWNow you can listen to the articles from Fox News!
Jailed Russian politician Alexei Navalny shared a series of messages on social media on Monday, claiming he was transferred from his jail cell in solitary confinement for not buttoning the top of his prison uniform.
More than a dozen messages posted on an account belonging to Navalny, a 46-year-old voice critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, described his current imprisonment in a special housing unit (SHU) as “unbearable, illegal” and the ” harsher punishment in the hierarchy of legal prisons “.
“SHU is the toughest punishment in the legal prison hierarchy. And also in the illegal one: torture and murder are often carried out there,” Navalny wrote.
He added: “The SHU is a 2.5 x 3 meter concrete kennel. Most of the time it’s unbearable in there because it’s cold and wet. There’s water on the floor. I got the beach version – it goes a long way. hot and there is hardly any air. “
It is not immediately clear how the information in the messages was passed from Navalny to whoever posted it as the account said in the posts that Navalny is not allowed to have visitors, just a cup and a book.
“Greetings from isolation,” Navalny began the series of posts.
“There is only a cup and a book in my cell. I only get a spoon and a plate at mealtimes. They even took away my prison clothes and gave me the temporary ones. Now I have big white SHU letters on the back “, the added account. Writing: “I am an icon of conscious consumption”.
Navalny, who is serving an 11.5-year sentence after being found guilty of violation of probation and then of fraud and contempt of court, said he continues to challenge unlawful imprisonment and said he continues to round up comrades. imprisonment against the tyrannical government.
“The Kremlin wants to see its Gulag made up of silent slaves. But here I am, gathering people and demanding that certain laws be respected, instead of asking for forgiveness,” he wrote his account.
As for why he was transferred to SHU, Navalny wrote, “So I was summoned from my shack to the commission, where they announced that the footage showed me regularly unbuttoning the top button of my prison robe while in the industrial area (the dress is just a few sizes too small for me). “
“This, of course, characterizes me as an unrepentant and incorrigible villain. That’s why the decision was made to put me in the special housing unit,” he added.
Navalny has been in solitary confinement for three days, where he was instructed to use the new conditions to “reconsider” his attitude.
“Visits are not allowed to those in the SHU, so they say that unless I ‘reconsider my attitude’, it will become my permanent residence,” he wrote. “It is not clear what attitude I should reconsider. Towards slave labor? Or towards Putin?”
The jailed critic suggested that his captors could leave him in the confined cell for a longer period than the typical 15-day duration.
“Normally, you can’t spend more than 15 days in the SHU, but this rule is easily bypassed. They lock you up for 15 days, release you, and then put you back there for another 15 days,” his account wrote.
And, “The window is tiny, but the walls are too thick for any airflow – even the cobwebs don’t move. There is no ventilation. At night you lie there and feel like a fish on the shore. The bunk. iron is fixed to the wall, like in a train, but the lever that lowers it is outside “.
“No visits, no letters, no packages,” he continued. “This is the only place in the prison where smoking is prohibited. They only give me pen and paper for 1 hour and 15 minutes a day.”
“It’s okay, it can get worse,” he added optimistically.
Navalny has denied wrongdoing and claims that the charges against him are fabricated.
He returned to Russia last year from Germany, where he was hospitalized after an attempted poisoning by a Soviet-era nerve agent in Siberia. Navalny, the United States and its allies say the poisoning was orchestrated by the Russian government, which denied the claim.
