Navalny missing from prison colony, claims senior aide

ALEXEI NAVALNY, the Russian opposition leader, has disappeared from his jail and is being held by the state in an unknown location, according to his spokesman.

The 45-year-old has been taken from the prison colony outside Moscow where he was serving his sentence, Kira Yarmysh said yesterday.

“His lawyer who came to see him was kept at the checkpoint until 2pm and was then told: ‘There is no such convict here’,” she said.

It is assumed he is being transferred to another prison, but there has been no official announcement.

A Russian court last month upheld a verdict convicting the jailed politician of embezzlement and sending him to a high-security prison for another decade.

Russian prison authorities routinely keep relations of inmates in the dark about transfers, often taking weeks before officially informing them of their whereabouts.

Ms Yarmysh said: “The problem with his transfer to another colony is not only that the high-security colony is much scarier. As long as we don’t know where Alexei is, he’s at the mercy of the [Russian government] system that has already tried to kill him.”