Paris is once again worried about Alexeï Navalny. France denounced Monday evening the transfer of the Russian opponent to a penal colony located in the Russian Arctic, seeing it as a new violation of human rights.
“The secret kept for almost ten days by Russia on the situation of Alexeï Navalny and his transfer to a particularly isolated place of detention, to cut him off even further from his loved ones while his state of health has seriously deteriorated since his incarceration, constitute new unacceptable developments and patent violations of human rights,” reacted a spokesperson for the Quai d’Orsay.
A sentence of 19 years of detention
Charismatic anti-corruption activist and number one enemy of Vladimir Putin, Alexeï Navalny, 47, is serving a nineteen-year prison sentence for “extremism”. He was arrested in January 2021 upon his return from Russia from convalescence in Germany for a poisoning which he blames on the Kremlin.
He disappeared at the beginning of December from the penal colony in the Vladimir region, 250 kilometers east of Moscow, where he had been detained until then, which meant his probable transfer to another establishment. He reappeared on Monday in a penal colony in Kharp, in the Russian Arctic, an isolated region where he was transferred three months before the presidential election (March 2024).
“France recalls that Russia is, under international law, entirely responsible for the health of its detainees,” also added the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Paris finally calls for the release of all political prisoners, “immediately and unconditionally, and for an end to all legal persecution against them”.