Navalny Moved To New, Unknown Location, His Lawyers Say

Lawyers for Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny say he has been moved from a detention center in the Vladimir region, northeast of the Russian capital, to an undisclosed location amid a call from Western countries for his immediate release.

Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was sent to prison last month to serve 2 1/2 years over alleged parole violations related to an embezzlement case he and rights activists say was trumped up for political reasons, something the authorities deny.

“Aleksei’s lawyers have been at the pretrial detention center-3 in Kolchugino since the beginning of the working day. Under various pretexts, they were not allowed to visit Aleksei (some sort of holiday was invented, then someone felt bad, apparently, after the celebration). Only at 14:00 (local time) were they informed that Aleksei had left. When asked where — they refused to answer,” according to a tweet on Navalny’s certified Twitter account on March 12.

On March 3, Navalny said that he had been moved to Detention Center No. 3 in the town of Kolchugino, though it was expected that eventually he would be moved to a penal colony in the nearby city of Pokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow. The colony is known as one of the toughest in the European part of the Russian Federation.

As news of his transfer broke, dozens of countries, including the United States, called for his immediate release and an investigation into his poisoning last year with a military-grade nerve agent.

Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport in January immediately upon returning from Berlin, where he had been recovering from what several Western labs determined was a poisoning attempt using a Novichok-type nerve agent that saw him fall ill on a flight in Siberia in August 2020.

Russia has denied involvement, but Navalny has said the assassination attempt was ordered by Putin.

A Moscow court in February ruled that, while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an older embezzlement case that is widely considered politically motivated.

His suspended 3 1/2-year sentence was converted into jail time, though the court reduced that amount to 2 1/2 years for time already served in detention.

Navalny’s detention set off a wave of national protests and a crackdown against his supporters.

The European Union and the United States imposed fresh sanctions against Russia over the Navalny case.

On March 12, the representative for Poland read out a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council that said the actions against Navalny by Russian authorities were “unacceptable and politically motivated.”

“We call on the Russian Federation for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Navalny and of all those unlawfully or arbitrarily detained, including for exercising their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of religion or belief,” the joint statement said.

It was signed by 45 countries, most of which were European but also included Australia, Canada, and Japan, along with the United States.

With reporting by Reuters