Alexei Navalny, the leader of Russia's main opposition party, has been transferred to a maximum-security prison facility, state media outlet TASS reported on Tuesday.
Last March, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to serve an additional nine years in a maximum security prison following his conviction on charges of fraud, charges that he has denied.
Sergey Yazhan, the chairman of the regional public oversight commission, told the news outlet that Navalny has arrived at the IK-6 penal colony, which is located in Melekhovo in the Vladimir Region. However, a spokesperson for Navalny said that his team has yet to receive confirmation that his transfer is complete. His legal team reportedly arrived at the penal colony where Navalny had been housed for a meeting with him, only to be told that he wasn't there.
"He was transferred to a maximum-security prison as his verdict came into force but we don't know which one," Navalny's attorney, Olga Mikhailova, told CNN. "Where he is exactly, is unknown to us."
She added, "We'll keep searching."
Navalny's spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said in a social media post that "The problem with his transfer to another colony is not only that the high-security colony is much scarier. As long as we don't know where Alexei is, he remains one-on-one with the system that has already tried to kill him, so our main task now is to locate him as soon as possible."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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