2023-09-24 16:31:38
Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza (AP Photo, File)
The Russian opponent Vladimir Kara-Murzá, sentenced to 25 years in prison for high treason and for spreading false information about the Army, has been locked up in a Siberian prison, his lawyer reported this Sunday.
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Kara-Murzá, 42, has been sent to the IK-6 maximum security prison in the Siberian city of Omsk, about 2,700 kilometers from Moscow.
“IK-6 is a maximum security prison for first-time convicts. It is located on the outskirts of the city,” wrote Vadim Prokhorov, the opponent’s lawyer, on Facebook.
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The opponent and journalist critical of the Kremlin was taken from Moscow to Omsk for almost three weeks, an especially traumatic process known in Russia as “etapirovanie” (transfer in stages).
Along the way he was locked up in prisons in Samara and Penza, in the European part of Russia; in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, and in a preventive prison in Omsk.
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As soon as he arrived at IK-6 on September 21, Kara-Murzá was locked in a punishment cell for having committed an infraction that his lawyers are unaware of.
A prisoner, in a confinement cell at the IK-6 maximum security prison in Omsk
The Russian prison authorities ordered the transfer of the opponent without waiting for the Justice to rule on an appeal filed by his defense.
Recently, Kara-Murzá’s wife, Yevguenia, denounced on the social network ”·
The United States Embassy in Moscow has condemned the political persecution of the opponent, a process it considers “politically motivated.” Washington demanded “the immediate release of Mr. Kara-Murzá and more than 600 political prisoners in Russia.”
The opposition considers that the Kremlin had been targeting Kara-Murzá for years, one of the initiators of the Magnitsky Law, the first list of sanctions against the Kremlin, despite the fact that he returned to Russia at the beginning of the year.
Kara-Murza, accused of treason for criticizing the Army (via Archyde.com)
Kara-Murzá, who wrote opinion articles for media such as The Washington Post, was arrested in April for allegedly collaborating with NATO countries and discrediting the Armed Forces in a speech given in the Arizona House of Representatives (USA) on the 15th. of March
Considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, he was awarded the 2022 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded by the Council of Europe.
Several dozen independent journalists previously demanded Kara-Murzá’s freedom in an open letter in which they accused the accusations of being “unfounded” and “cynical,” and the judicial process opened against the opponent as political. “Kara-Murzá is a true patriot who in the first days of the war already spoke out against Russian aggression (…). But today in Russia advocating for peace and the cessation of war is a crime,” they noted.
According to the research group Bellingcat, he had previously been followed by the same unit of the Federal Security Service that later poisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalni, who in turn is serving eight years in prison.
(With information from EFE)
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