The daughter of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny says she is concerned about her father's welfare after his transfer last week to a penal colony where conditions are tougher.
Daria Navalnaya told U.S. broadcaster CNN on June 20 that conditions at the prison where her father has been sent are very different from a typical prison.
"This is one of the most dangerous and famous high-security prisons in Russia, known for torturing and murdering the inmates," Navalnaya said. “It is, of course, very concerning because he is one-on-one with the same people and the same government that tried to kill him in 2020.”
The prison fenced off a separate area to create “a prison within the prison” for her father, she said.
“They don’t let him go anywhere. People are not allowed to communicate with him, and this kind of isolation is really purely psychological torture for anyone,” she said.
Navalnaya said Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t want him speaking” and “doesn’t want everyone knowing that his government is corrupt.”
Navalny, one of the most prominent critics of the Kremlin, was transferred on June 14 to Correctional Colony No. 6 in the town of Melekhovo, about 250 kilometers east of Moscow.
Navalny had expected to be transferred to a prison with harsher conditions after the Moscow City Court rejected his appeal in May against a new nine-year jail term he was handed on embezzlement and contempt charges.
Navalny, 46, was arrested in January 2021 upon his arrival in Moscow from Germany, where he had been treated for a poison attack with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent. Navalny has blamed Putin for his poisoning. The Kremlin has denied any role in the attack.
Navalny was handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole because of his convalescence abroad. He had been serving that sentence in a penal colony in Pokrov before his transfer to Melekhovo.
He and his supporters have rejected all charges against him, calling them politically motivated.
