Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Monday that the authorities at the prison where he is serving his nine-year term had placed him in solitary confinement on New Year’s Eve for the 10th time since his sentence began.
“My prison goons actually bothered enough to convene their commission on the weekend of December 31 especially for me,” the vocal Kremlin critic tweeted.
Navalny said that he was sent to solitary confinement for washing his face half an hour earlier than he was supposed to. He also reported having been deliberately put in a cell with a prisoner with poor hygiene and severe flu symptoms.
As a result, Navalny is currently experiencing fever, chills, and a cough, his lawyer Vadim Kobzev said.
This is the 10th time the Kremlin critic has been placed in solitary confinement since beginning his sentence less than a year ago. He was previously given the same punishment for unbuttoning his shirt, refusing to clean a fence, and for failing to put his hands behind his back for three seconds while walking down a corridor.
Navalny has now spent a total of four months in solitary confinement, developing severe back problems as a result of the harsh conditions.
The Kremlin critic, who built a huge social media operation producing videos exposing corruption among government officials, was sentenced to nine years in prison in March 2022.
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