Video of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny that emerged in late April has focused attention on a Russian prison system that, former inmates say, is designed to break convicts, not reform them, and where medical neglect is rife.
Valery Varganov, a criminal defense lawyer unconnected to Navalny, said the allegations, if proven, suggested prison staff were failing in their responsibility to protect the rights of convicts and to help with their rehabilitation. On this basis, he said, the Russian Prosecutor's office should carry out official checks "and take a legal and well-grounded decision." The Prosecutor's office did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Navalny said in an Instagram message published via his lawyers soon after his arrival at IK-2 that he had not witnessed any violence in what he called "a friendly concentration camp." But he also said he could "easily believe" stories he had heard about prisoners being beaten half to death with wooden hammers. In other posts, he complained of what he said was systematic medical neglect in the prison system.
Inmates say they regard it as a "Red Zone" prison – one that exercises total control over the minutiae of daily lives. Prisoners sleep on bunk beds in open-plan barracks. The day begins at 6 am with a blast of the Russian national anthem, followed by synchronised physical exercises and pointless tasks such as repeatedly making and unmaking beds. Prisoners must stay on their feet most of the day and are forbidden to sleep before 10 p.m.
Radu Pelin, a builder, began his jail sentence in 2019. He arrived in IK-2 with a fractured right heel – an injury sustained during his arrest on what he said was a trumped up charge of assaulting a customer. A civilian hospital fitted him with a plaster cast, he said, but officials at the pre-trial detention facility removed it, saying there was no fracture.
Pelin's experience was echoed by another former inmate at IK-2, nationalist politician Dmitry Demushkin, the former leader of an outlawed, far right group called Slavic Union. Demushkin served one year and eight months in IK-2 for inciting racial hatred, a charge he denied. He was released in February 2019.
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