In the gates of Penal Colony No. 2, dour prison officers at army fatigues turn away unwanted visitors.
A ferocious-looking dog on a brief leash barked its caution because the guards checked our passports before ordering us to leave the infamous website where Russia’s key opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, was delivered for the subsequent two-and-a-half years.
“I’d no idea it had been possible to organize a true concentration camp 100km out of Moscow,” Navalny stated, including his mind was shaven.
“Video cameras are everywhere, everybody is watched and in the smallest violation they create a report.
Life within the prison, even in the town of Pokrov, could become more commonplace, stressful and potentially dangerous according to a former inmate.
Konstantin Kotov functioned that which he said were just two unhappy sentences — the first for four weeks, the next for six weeks — in Penal Colony No. 2 for breaking Russian anti-protest legislation.
He was released in December and has been worried about coming, but consented to journey with CNN to clarify the way the penal colony operates on the interior.
“In the very first minutes you’re here you are having psychological and moral pressure,” he told CNN.
“You’re made to do things which you would never do in ordinary life. You’re forbidden to converse to other convicts. They make you learn the listing of titles of their workers. You’re not permitted to sit . They don’t permit you to read, they don’t permit you to compose a letter. It may last two weeks, it could last three weeks”
Navalny was delivered to prison following a Moscow court on February 2 substituted his suspended sentence with prison time because of violations of his probation.
Navalny blames the Russian security services for putting Novichok in his underpants along with also the US and European Union mostly concur and have sanctioned Russian officials due to his or her participation.
Russian police were originally reluctant to state precisely where Navalny had been , refusing to inform Navalny’s attorneys or family members at which he was being held after being transferred.
Today he is verified to be at Penal Colony 2, he’s expected to resolve the remainder of his sentence . Approximately 50 to 60 guys slept in his area, he stated, each with just a small amount of living room.
“you cannot write, you can’t read. By way of instance, I saw TV virtually all afternoon, Russian national channels.
It is what he calls the”daily futile action” which Kotov maintains sets the tone, but there would be the constant adjustments for any perceived wrongdoing.
The smallest violation can observe an inmate shot to solitary confinement, Kotov said, possibly for weeks at a time.
Purchase is preserved both by prison guards and from offenders called”orderlies” who collaborate with the prison management.
Although the orderly can also be a convict, Kotov stated, they’re relied on report anybody who does not toe the line.
“They’re similar to spies who follow your every measure and report them to the government,” Kotov said.
Alexander Kalashnikov of Russia’s national penitentiary agency (FSIN) has stated Navalny has been treated as another prisoner.
“Everything is performed within the frame of this law and the present laws,” he told reporters in late February.
‘Empire of dread’
Violence could be shared in Russian prisons. Disturbing video released from the Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta reveals prisoners being beaten by guards at a penal colony in Yaroslavl, the area alongside where Navalny is being hauled. A Russian court has convicted a lot of people of participation in what has turned into a national scandal but former offenders say it is not an isolated instance.
Kotov says that he saw inmates being defeated by orderlies in Penal Colony No. 2. Most often, they’d unscrew a seat leg and struck people in their heels — debilitating and inconspicuous — he told CNN.
Navalny within his Instagram article said he’d yet to watch any violence but he”readily considers the several stories” of brutality from the colony as a result of fear he’s witnessed one of his fellow inmates.
He explained he was being awakened with a protector shining a light and camera in his head to check he had been there as he’s been given a”flight risk.”
Kotov said he feared Navalny’s mental condition as opposed to his bodily wellbeing, stating he considers Navalny’s high profile could indicate that officials wouldn’t need him harmed. “That’s their objective.”
Prisoner’s rights specialist Pyotr Kuryanov, of this Defending Prisoners’ Rights Foundation, said that the problem had been”very dangerous” from the prison camp, and that he called a”empire of fear”
“It’s very tough psychologically. The tiniest potential breach… may bring a convict into some heavy physical harm.”
Within the pops of two-story barracks, offenders can be arranged to wash floors with toothbrushes and other demeaning and useless jobs designed to humiliate, Kuryanov explained.
