Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who survived a chemical poisoning last year that he called a Kremlin attempt to kill him, has begun serving his two-and-a-half-year sentence at a notorious penal camp (IK-2).Navalny, who was removed from his Moscow jail cell Thursday, is being held at a detention facility in the prison in the Vladimir region, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of the Russian capital, Alexey Melnikov, secretary of the civil oversight commission of Moscow, told Bloomberg. The jail, where inmates are housed in barracks and typically do manual labor, is classified as a “red zone” where the administration controls every aspect of life. “It’s a tough penal camp with very strict rules, to put it mildly,” said Eva Merkacheva, a member of a civic-oversight group for the prison system. Konstantin Kotov, an opposition activist who was freed in December after 1 1/2 years at the same prison, said he was subjected to constant intimidation. This included repeated punishment for so-called infringements such as not saluting a prison guard or borrowing someone’s gloves -- with those that his relatives sent him not being delivered -- as well as isolating him from other inmates. “Alexey is going to have a very difficult time,” Kotov said. “The administration keeps tabs on your every move.”
While his case was so high-profile that no violence was used against him, “from the very first day I came under extreme psychological pressure,” he said. The activist’s lawyer, Maria Eismont, got access to Kotov within a day and a half of his arrival at the jail but he’d already agreed to give up his right to confidential conversations with her, she said. “If I was the prison service and I wanted to make Navalny’s life as hellish as possible, I’d send him precisely to this camp,” Eismont added. Citing concerns about his safety in prison, the European Court of Human Rights in mid-February called on Russia to release Navalny before his case was considered. Russian officials rejected that request. The Kremlin critic said he’s been classified as a flight risk. That would prevent him from getting early release and mean he falls under special supervision. Navalny’s arrest in mid-January when he returned to Russia provoked the biggest anti-Kremlin protests in years and was condemned by the European Union and the U.S., which are both considering new sanctions to punish Putin for his imprisonment. Authorities cracked down on the demonstrations last month, detaining more than 11,000 people and prosecuting key Navalny allies.
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