Alexey Navalny confirms that he’s in custody at a pre-trial detention center in Kolchugino, Vladimir region
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Opposition politician Alexey Navalny, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for alleged parole violations, is in custody at Pre-trial Detention Center Number 3 (SIZO-3) in the city of Kolchugino in Russia’s Vladimir region.
This was confirmed by Navalny himself in an Instagram post on Wednesday, March 3.
“Hello, this is Navalny again! But not [coming to you] from ‘Kremlin central,’ but from SIZO-3 ‘Kolchugino’ in the Vladimir region. When a prisoner is headed for transfer and they say ‘Vladimir region’ he gets sad, such is the reputation of the local facilities. But everything is fine with me, there isn’t even a pull-up bar in the exercise yard.”
Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev, who was spotted near the detention center in Kolchugino during the day on Wednesday, wrote on Twitter that Navalny is currently being held in a quarantine cell with two other inmates. “He’s in complete isolation, he can’t receive letters…There’s nothing in the cell except a TV. There’s no refrigerator, there isn’t even a kettle,” Kobzev said.
An unnamed source in law enforcement told the Russian state news agency TASS that Navalny is in custody in Kolchugino in order to quarantine ahead of his transfer to Penal Colony Number 2 in Pokrov.
On February 2, a Moscow court revoked Navalny’s parole in the Yves Rocher case and sentenced him to nearly three years in prison. On February 20, the Moscow City Court upheld this decision, but reduced Navalny’s prison sentence by six weeks, taking into account the time previously spent under house arrest and in pre-trial detention. Navalny will now spend two and a half years in a penal colony.
On February 25, Navalny was transferred from the Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison in Moscow. Two days later, media reports emerged that he had been moved to Penal Colony Number 2 in the city of Pokrov, Vladimir region.
(1) The Yves Rocher case
The so-called Yves Rocher case dates back to 2014, when Navalny and his brother Oleg were found guilty of embezzlement and laundering funds stolen from two Russian companies associated with the French cosmetics brand. Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and Alexey Navalny was given a 3.5-year probation sentence. The brothers pleaded not guilty, calling the case politically motivated.