Alexei Navalny is barred from running in the 2018 presidential election. (document)
Paris:
Russia’s top opposition politician Alexei Navalny died on Friday at an Arctic prison colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence.
Here’s what we know so far about the death of the 47-year-old head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin:
Died ‘after a walk’
Russia’s Federal Prison Service said Navalny had been targeted for poisoning before he was jailed and fell ill after taking a walk.
“Navalny felt very bad after his walk and almost immediately lost consciousness. Medical staff arrived immediately and the ambulance team was called,” the prison service said in a statement.
The statement added: “Resuscitative measures were taken but did not yield a positive result. Paramedics confirmed the offender’s death. The cause of death is being determined.”
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had launched an investigation into the death.
The lawyer did not inform
Navalny’s defense team said they had not been informed of the death but that lawyers would travel to the remote Karp prison in the Arctic to learn about the situation.
However, Western governments were quick to blame the Kremlin.
“The Russian government bears a heavy responsibility,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
prison colony
Navalny has been in a Russian prison since being jailed for “extremism” in January 2021. In August last year, the term was extended to 19 years. This is just the latest jail sentence in a series of charges including corruption.
He spent most of his detention at the IK-6 penal colony in the Vladimir region, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Moscow.
In December, he was missing for more than two weeks. At the end of that month, it was revealed that he had been transferred to the infamous IK-3 colony in Kapp, Arctic.
Navalny said on social media on December 26 that he was “fine” after a “rather exhausting” 20 days of being transferred to a remote prison in the Arctic Circle.
IK-3 is located more than 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. Its name means Northern Lights, but its nickname is “Polar Wolf.”
It was built in the 1960s as part of a network of Stalin-era labor camps known as the Gulag. It can house up to 1,020 inmates. Prisoners were sent to process reindeer skins.
Poisoned before going to jail
Navalny was jailed in 2021 after surviving a poisoning assassination attempt and later launched massive anti-government protests.
Navalny has been an anti-corruption activist since 2007, led massive protests in 2011-12 and was first convicted of corruption in 2013. He denies the accusations.
Navalny, who was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election, was hospitalized in Siberia in August 2020 after losing consciousness during a flight.
He was transferred to a Berlin hospital where tests showed he had been poisoned by the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. Navalny blamed Putin for the poisoning. The Kremlin denied this.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
