Navalny seen on video in first court docket look since switch to brutal Arctic jail | EUROtoday

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Alexei Navalny has made his first court docket look since his switch to a most safety Arctic penal colony in Russia’s far north, the place the outspoken Vladimir Putin critic has been despatched to serve a 19-year sentence.

Navalny’s group mentioned he had been moved to the distant penal colony dubbed “Polar Wolf” after he briefly went lacking final month.

The opposition politician cracked jokes in his first court docket look on Wednesday since being transferred from a jail in Melekhovo, east of Moscow, in an arduous three-week journey by highway and rail.

Navalny is suing the Russian jail authorities for mistreatment and joked that he was naive to count on Mr Putin to cease at shuttling him off to the Arctic.

“The thought that Putin will be satisfied with sticking me into a barracks in the far north and will stop torturing me in the punishment confinement was not only cowardly, but naive as well,” mentioned the 47-year-old, who has been jailed on costs of extremism that he says are politically motivated.

Navalny drew laughter from the decide when he requested if a karaoke celebration had been thrown on the Melekhovo facility to have a good time his departure.

Outlining the abusive remedy he has acquired in jail, he mentioned officers at his new jail accused him of refusing to “introduce himself in line with protocol” and ordered him to serve seven days in a punishment cell.

The decide finally rejected his criticism that authorities had acted illegally by sending him to an isolation cell in October for insulting a jail inspector.

His chief strategist Leonid Volkov mentioned that the Kremlin has thrown Navalny in a secluded colony which can’t be accessed simply.

“It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world,” he mentioned.

One of the fiercest critics of the Putin regime in Russia, Navalny was beforehand imprisoned in central Russia’s Vladimir area, 230km east of Moscow. However final month, he was transferred to a different colony above the Arctic Circle which has the very best degree of safety of all prisons in Russia.

Navalny’s social media account confirmed a photograph – presumably of him along with his again turned in direction of the digital camera – going through a closed-off concrete yard with the caption: “In the photo below, you can see my walking yard. 11 steps from the wall and 3 to the wall – not much to walk, but at least there’s something, so I go for a walk.”

Being in a punishment cell signifies that strolling exterior within the slender concrete jail yard is just allowed at 6.30am, he mentioned.

“Few things are as refreshing as a walk in Yamal at 6:30 in the morning. And what a wonderful fresh breeze that blows into the courtyard despite the concrete fence, it’s just wow!”

“It’s never been colder than -25°Fahrenheit (minus 32 degrees Celsius). Even at that temperature you can walk for more than half an hour, but only if you have time to grow a new nose, ears, and fingers,” he joked from the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp within the Yamal-Nenets area, about 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow, his supporters mentioned on December 25.

“Today I went for a walk, froze, and thought of Leonardo DiCaprio and his character’s dead horse trick in the movie ’The Revenant’. I do not think that it would have worked here. A dead horse would freeze to death in about 15 minutes,” his account posted.

Inmates in common circumstances are allowed to stroll “after lunch, and although it’s the polar evening proper now, nonetheless after lunch it’s hotter by a number of levels,” he mentioned.

The switch to a colony in Kharp, simply 100km from Vorkuta whose coal mines have been a part of the Soviet gulag prison-camp system, was decried by his allies who referred to as it yet one more try by the Kremlin to make Navalny undergo and additional pushed into silence.

The distant area is infamous for lengthy and extreme winters.

Navalny was thrown behind bars in January 2021 after he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He had aggressively campaigned in opposition to official corruption and organised main anti-Kremlin protests earlier than his arrest.

Until his shuffle final month, Navalny was serving time at Penal Colony quantity 6 within the Vladimir area, and officers there recurrently positioned him in a punishment cell for alleged minor infractions. He spent months in isolation.