Jailed Russian opposition leader and Vladimir Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny ‘vanishes’ from prison

Jailed Vladimir Putin’s critic, Alexei Navalny has reportedly gone lacking from a jail in Russia. 

The high-profile Russian opposition chief didn’t present up for a gathering along with his legal professionals immediately on the Pokrov penal colony and his whereabouts is now unknown.

“The place Alexei is now, and which colony he’s being taken to, we do not know,” Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of employees, mentioned in a press release on the Telegram app.

Volkov mentioned his lawyer went to see him however was saved on the checkpoint till 2pm earlier than they advised him: “There isn’t a such convict.”

Navalny was jailed by the Kremlin firstly of 2021 upon returning to Russia after receiving medical remedy in Germany following a poison assault with a novichok nerve agent throughout a go to to Siberia in 2020.

Navalny and his workforce subsequently accused Putin of the assault.

He’s at present serving over 11 years in jail after being imprisoned final yr for two-and-a-half years and in March being sentenced to a further 9 years for fraud and contempt of court docket.

Concern over his whereabouts comes simply weeks after Russian President Putin’s political foe confronted a 15-year extension to his jail time period following new legal accusations.

Authorities declared two weeks in the past that they’d opened a brand new investigation in opposition to the 46-year-old on prices of “creating an extremist group to fan hatred in opposition to officers and oligarchs” and making an attempt to stage unsanctioned rallies.

He responded to the so-called prices by saying: “Not even eight days have handed since my nine-year high-security sentence got here into drive, and immediately the investigator confirmed up once more and formally charged me with a brand new case.

“It seems that I created an extremist group as a way to incite hatred in direction of officers and oligarchs. And after they put me in jail, I dared to be disgruntled about it and referred to as for rallies.

“For that, they’re supposed so as to add as much as 15 extra years to my sentence.”

Navalny was given a nine-year time period in 2021 after a Russian court docket discovered him responsible of fraud prices. Additionally they fined him 1.2 million rubles (round £17,500).

He has overtly condemned the invasion of Ukraine, claiming it was “silly” and “constructed on lies”.

He advised a court docket listening to: “The conflict was supposed to cowl up the theft of Russian residents and divert their consideration away from the nation’s inside issues.”

Earlier than he went lacking, Navalny was serving on the Correctional Colony No. 2, a jail camp in Pokrov, 74 miles east of Moscow.