Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned leader of the Russian opposition, is in deteriorating health, his representatives said online Tuesday. File Photo courtesy of the Moscow City Court Press Service
April 11 (UPI) — Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned leader of the Russian opposition, is in deteriorating health, his representatives confirmed online Tuesday.
An ambulance was called Friday to the prison camp where Navalny is being held, his press secretary said, because of “acute stomach pain.”
“No one is treating him and they are not even telling him the diagnosis. He has lost 8 kilos (!) in the last 15 days in the punishment cell,” Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh said in a Twitter feed Tuesday.
“When Alexei asks what he is ill with, the prison doctor mockingly answers that it is ‘just spring and everyone has exacerbations.’ We do not rule out that all this time in prison he could have been poisoned with something to make his health deteriorate slowly but steadily.”
1/4 The lawyer says that an ambulance was called for Alexey @navalny on the night of Friday to Saturday because of an acute stomach pain. No one is treating him and they are not even telling him the diagnosis. He has lost 8 kilos(!) in the last 15 days in the punishment cell.— Кира Ярмыш (@Kira_Yarmysh) April 11, 2023
The 46-year-old Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021, was arrested for alleged parole violations and sentenced to two and a half years.
Last March, the Russian judicial system handed him an additional 9-year sentence in a labor camp for what it said was embezzlement and contempt of court.
His incarceration has been widely condemned by human rights experts.
Navalny spent weeks in the hospital after surviving a poisoning attempt on his life, later revealed to have been carried out by Russian agents.
In January, several experts signed an open letter calling for better treatment for Navalny in the remote prison camp, where he is routinely subjected to solitary confinement and denied access to lawyers.
“The problems are not limited to his health. On Friday he was released from the punishment cell, but on Monday he was sent back there for the 13th time. One of the prison officers told Navalny that a provocation was being prepared against him,” Yarmysh said Tuesday.
His “health and conditions worsen every day,” Yarmysh said. “Only publicity can help. Please share.”
Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, in January called attention to her husband’s deteriorating health.