Alexei Navalny asked the Russian justice to order the end of the night searches in his prison cell: “It is a form of torture”

Alexei Navalny on Monday asked a Russian court to order an end to the nightly inspections that guards carry out every hour in his cell in the Pokrov penal colony, 180 kilometers east of Moscow, where he is being held.

Addressing the court by video, the Russian opposition leader insisted that you have not done anything that justifies the designation of a risk of absconding, which led the prison authorities to order these revisions which deprive the activist of sleep.

“I just want them to stop waking me up every night.”Navalny said in footage broadcast by independent television Dozhd TV. “What did I do? Did I jump a fence? I dug a tunnel? Did I snatch the gun from a guard? Explain to me why you consider me a flight risk.” .

He further argued that the action of waking him up every hour “amounts to torture” and he told the judge that he “would go mad in a week” if he was subjected to such treatment.

The tribunal, for its part, postponed the continuation of the hearing until Wednesday.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, was arrested in January on his return from Germany where he was five months of convalescence from an attempted poisoning, an attack for which he blames the Russian authorities, but mainly to Putin himself. The Kremlin, however, denies these accusations.

In February, a court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison for violating the conditions of a 2014 probation for a case of embezzlement, which Navalny describes as political persecution.

Opposition leader goes on hunger strike to protest for the lack of medical care in prison where she suffered from back pain and numbness in her legs. After a few days raised the protest when the authorities they facilitated this attention in the face of growing international pressure.

On hunger strike, Navalny was transferred from the penal colony where was east of Moscow in the infirmary of another prison in Vladimir, a town 180 kilometers east of the capital.

Last week, authorities say opposition leader is “more or less recovered” after his 24-day hunger strike. “His health is more or less recovered normally (…) His weight is already 82 kilos”said the director of prison services (FSIN) Alexander Kalashnikov. “He eats normally, he can communicate with his family,” he added, quoted by the official agency. TASS.

Navalny was last seen last April, when he appeared very emaciated during a videoconference in court, causing great concern for his health.

With Navalny in prison, the prosecution asked a Moscow court to designate its Anti-Corruption Foundation and attached regional offices as extremist entities. The lower house of parliament, controlled by someone close to the Russian president, quickly approved a proposal to ban nominations from any member, supporter or donor of someone who is declared an “extremist”.

The simultaneous measures are widely seen as an attempt by the ruling party to prevent Navalny’s allies from standing in the parliamentary elections in September.

Last week, Navalny denounced he was the subject of three new criminal cases, at a time when the pressure against his movement and his supporters is increasing. The opponent indicated on his Instagram account that is accused of having embezzled “all donations” made to his anti-corruption organization, as good as creation of a group “that violates the rights of people” and of insult a judge in a recent process.

He is also accused of create a non-commercial organization and encourage Russians not to fulfill “their civic duties” publish an investigation into Putin’s alleged wealth, said Navalny, who last January launched a research on a black sea palace that Russian tycoons are said to have built for the Russian president, who has racked up more than 116 million views on YouTube. Putin, however, denies that the palace belongs to him.

With AP information

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