TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — An imprisoned Russian opposition determine has been transferred to a most safety jail in Siberia and positioned in a tiny “punishment cell,” his lawyer stated Sunday.
Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., 42, earlier this 12 months was convicted of treason for publicly denouncing Russia’s war in Ukraine and sentenced to 25 years in prison as a part of the Kremlin’s relentless crackdown on critics. On Thursday, he arrived at IK-6 — a most safety penal colony within the Siberian metropolis of Omsk, his lawyer Vadim Prokhorov stated in a Fb publish Sunday.
Prokhorov stated the switch from a detention heart in Moscow, the place Kara-Murza was being held pending trial and appeals, took lower than three weeks. Russian jail transfers, normally performed by prepare, are infamous for taking a very long time, typically weeks, throughout which there’s no entry to prisoners, and details about their whereabouts is proscribed.
Kara-Murza, a journalist and an opposition activist, was jailed in April 2022. The fees towards him stemmed from a speech he gave weeks previous to the arrest to the Arizona Home of Representatives during which he denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
An affiliate of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was killed close to the Kremlin in 2015, Kara-Murza survived poisonings in 2015 and 2017 that he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian officers have denied accountability.
Kara-Murza rejected the fees towards him and referred to as them punishment for standing as much as President Vladimir Putin. He likened the proceedings to the present trials underneath Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Prokhorov stated Sunday that upon arrival to the penal colony in Omsk, Kara-Murza was instantly positioned in a “punishment cell” — a tiny concrete cell the place convicts are held in isolation for violating jail rules.
Jail authorities have commonly despatched imprisoned dissidents to such cells in latest months over alleged minor infractions, a follow that’s extensively thought-about designed to place further stress on Kremlin critics behind bars.
Prokhorov referred to as the information about Kara-Murza’s excessive confinement “worrying” given his deteriorating well being, undermined by the poisonings and solitary confinement he had undergone in pre-trial detention.