Prison No. 2 is infamous for numerous reports of abuse and torture.
Two former inmates of Pokrov prison number 2, in the Vladimir region, some hundred kilometers east of Moscow, where the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalni, is serving a sentence, today denounced the abuses to which the politician is subjected by part of the authorities of the penal institution.
“When someone does not kneel before them, they have only one goal, to break it,” he told the opposition television channel Dozhd Nariman Osmanov.
Prison No. 2 is infamous for numerous reports of abuse and torture, including beatings and sleep deprivation, committed by hooded and unmarked members of special units.
Osmanov affirmed that the prison authorities spoke with each of the prisoners and strictly prohibited them from engaging in any type of conversation with the Russian opponent.
“They completely isolated him. Naturally we suffered together with him. I have not yet been able to recover psychologically,” he confessed, noting that nevertheless, he pointed out to Navalni where the “safe zone” was, the place where sports can be practiced.
For his part, Evgueni Burak commented that in the detachment they put about twenty prisoners who wrote down any word from Navalni.
“So that he could not take a single step without anyone knowing,” he said, noting that when the opponent went out to meet with his lawyers, officers from the prison came to the detachment for the prisoners to inform them.
Some of those inmates also tried unsuccessfully to provoke him into a fight.
Navalni was also subjected to psychological torture during his 24-day hunger strike in prison to demand that he be treated by doctors of his trust due to his deteriorating health.
“Between 6 and 7 in the morning they brought half a sack of sausages, and they began to fry them to force him to leave the hunger strike,” Osmanov said.
In addition, they put in his cell a prisoner named Yushchenko, supposedly ill with tuberculosis in its contagious phase, but Osmannov managed to warn the opponent that it was all a hoax.
During Navalni’s admission after his hunger strike, the prison authorities projected a video to the prisoners about “the non-traditional sexual orientation” of the opponent, precisely on June 4, the day of his birthday, according to Burak.
Navalni, who was declared by the prison authorities as “prone to escape”, has repeatedly denounced the conditions of his detention “close to torture”, and the permanent harassment to which he is subjected.
The Russian opposition leader was sentenced last February to two and a half years in prison for having breached the terms of his probation while recovering in Germany after being poisoned with a Novichok-class chemical agent that, according to him, was ordered directly by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
Last October the European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize for freedom of conscience for the year 2021, highlighting the “great courage” of Navalni, whose fight against the Kremlin “has cost him his freedom and almost his life.”
In addition, MEPs demanded the “immediate and unconditional release” of the opponent.
The news was applauded by the West, but the Kremlin openly rejected the decision of the European Parliament. (I)
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