Extract from ABC News
Posted
A smiling and joking Alexei Navalny has made his first on-camera appearance since his transfer to a remote Arctic penal colony.
Key points:
- Mr Navalny is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism
- He was transferred in December to the high security prison in Kharp 1,900 kilometres north-east of Moscow
- The politician has been behind bars since January 2021, after recuperating from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin
The Vladimir Putin foe is serving a 19-year sentence and appeared in court via video link on Wednesday wearing black prison garb and with a buzz cut.
He was talking from the "special regime" colony in Kharp, about 900 kilometres north-east of Moscow.
At the hearing, Mr Navalny cracked jokes about the Arctic weather and asked if officials at his former prison threw a party when he was transferred.
The video was beamed to a courtroom hundreds of kilometres away in the town of Kovrov, in the Vladimir region of central Russia.
The hearing was for one of the many lawsuits he filed against the penal colony, with this particular one challenging one of his stints in a "punishment cell".
In video footage and media reports from the hearing, Mr Navalny, 47, talked in his usual sardonic tone about how much he had missed officials at his old prison and the Kovrov court officials.
He also joked about the harsh prison in Russia's far north.
"Conditions here — and that's a dig at you, esteemed defendants — are better than at IK-6 in Vladimir," Mr Navalny said, using the penal colony's acronym.
"There is one problem, though — and I don't know which court to file a suit about it — the weather is bad here," he added with a chuckle.
Mr Navalny, who is Mr Putin's fiercest political foe, is serving time on charges of extremism.
He spent months in isolation at prison colony number six before his transfer.
He was repeatedly placed in a tiny punishment cell over alleged minor infractions, such as buttoning his prison uniform wrong.
They also refused to give him his mail, deprived him of writing supplies, and would not allow visits from relatives, Mr Navalny argued in his lawsuits challenging his treatment.
In the one before the court on Wednesday, Mr Navalny contested a stint in solitary confinement.
The judge ruled against him and sided with prison officials, following the pattern of previous rulings.
Russian independent news site Mediazona reported the court played a video of an incident last year in which Mr Navalny lashed out at a prison official who took away his pen.
The official then accused Mr Navalny of insulting him, and the politician was put in the punishment cell for 12 days.
According to the report, Mr Navalny admitted on Wednesday he shouldn't have "yelled" at the official and "overdid it" by calling him names.
He argued nonetheless that he was allowed to have the pen and should not have been punished by prison officials.
Mr Navalny also asked the penal colony's representatives whether they celebrated his transfer with a "party, or a karaoke party," drawing laughter from the judge, Mediazona reported.
The politician has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.
Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption, organised major anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office.
He has since received three prison sentences, rejecting all the charges against him as politically motivated.
AP
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