Russian dissident Ildar Dadin has finally been located in penal colony IK-5 in the Altai region according to his wife, Anastasia Zotova.
After a telephone conversation with her husband on Sunday, Zotova said that Dadin was “healthy.”
Dadin is serving a 2.5 year sentence for unauthorized public protests. His whereabouts were unknown for 37 days after he was transferred out of another penal colony in early December. During that time, Zotova believes that her husband was sent to Tyumen in Siberia.
On Jan. 8, Deputy Head of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service Valery Maximenko told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper that Dadin had arrived at a new penal colony and would be able to call his family members from there. He did not, however, specify the location of the colony.
"All is well with him,” Maximenko said. “He will write a letter, but it will take a few days. Therefore it was decided to let him call. He will tell you where he arrived, how he is and what happened to him.”
On Nov. 1 2016, the news site Meduza published a letter from Dadin to his wife in which he claimed to have experienced systematic torture at the hands of penal colony personnel.
The allegations sparked a Presidential Council on Human Rights investigation. Members of the Presidential Council visited the penal colony in Segezha. The Federal Penitentiary Service carried out its own investigation, after which it denied that Dadin had been beaten by colony personnel.
