Alexei Navalny, Russia’s best-known opposition politician, is suffering from a mysterious ailment in custody that may be the result of a slow-acting poison, as his body weight has dropped by about 8 kg in about two weeks, his spokesman said.

An ambulance was called to the maximum security colony IK-6 in Melekovo, about 250 kilometers east of Moscow, where Navalny is being held from Friday evening until Saturday, his press secretary Kira Yarmish said in a short video on Twitter.

She said that an unknown indigestion flared up on Friday, and that prison doctors had previously administered an injection she declined to name.

We do not rule out that at this moment Alexei Navalny is being slowly hounded

“We do not rule out that now Alexei Navalny is being slowly poisoned, slowly killed in order to attract less attention,” Yarmish wrote on Twitter. “He is being held in a punishment cell, experiencing acute pain without medical attention,” he said.

Asked about claims that Navalny may be slowly being poisoned, the Kremlin replied that it was not monitoring his health and that this was a matter for the federal penitentiary service.

The prison service, which has in the past denied accusations of abuse by its officers from Novalny and said he was always offered medical attention when needed, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Navalny, who is serving a total of 11.5 years in prison for fraud and contempt of court and says the charges are meant to silence him, tweeted on Tuesday that he has been moved back to solitary confinement and forced to endure “extremely hellish conditions.” “.

Jarmis said Navalny had suffered similar stomach pains in January after being given antibiotics to fight the virus and that he had lost a lot of weight again.

The German government said yesterday, Wednesday, that it was very concerned about Navalny’s deteriorating health. Reuters was unable to independently verify Navalny’s state of health.

“Mandela” of Russia for its supporters

Navalny is a former lawyer who rose to fame more than a decade ago by ridiculing President Vladimir Putin’s elite and making accusations of large-scale corruption. Navalny’s supporters describe him as a Russian version of the South African Nelson Mandela, who will one day be released from prison and lead the country.

Instead, the Russian authorities consider him and his supporters to be extremists with ties to the US CIA and aimed at destabilizing Russia. They outlawed his movement, forcing many of his supporters to flee abroad.

In 2020, Navalny survived an apparent attempt to poison himself during a flight in Siberia with a nerve agent, tests by Western labs showed. Navalny accused the Russian state of attempting to assassinate him, which Moscow denies. He himself was hospitalized in Germany for treatment for this poisoning, but voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021, where he was arrested and imprisoned upon arrival.

Jarmis stated that the drugs sent to Navalny’s prison by his mother were not received by the guards from the post office and returned.

According to his spokesman, his supporters have to fight prison authorities whenever Navalny has a health problem to get him any treatment.

“The mistreatment of Aleksey’s health is standard practice in colony No. 6 (for prisoners).” All we can do right now (to help him) is to talk about Alexei everywhere, ”said Jarmis.

Source: RES-IPE