The Russian government’s unusual justification for depriving Alexei Navalny of sleep, a practice banned and considered torture

“This is probably due to the system of maintaining discipline and order of the installations.“. With this sentence, the spokesperson for the government of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, justified the sleep deprivation to which the imprisoned opposition leader is subjected Alexei Navalny.

Navalny reported to security services that his jailers deprive him of sleep at night, which is equivalent to a “torture“, according to the text of the letter published Thursday on its website. The guards “preventing me from sleeping is an act of sleep deprivation torture“Wrote the politician, who assured in his letter that they would wake him up”eight times a night“.

Sleep deprivation is in fact considered a practice of psychological torture prohibited by the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted in 1984.

In this regard, the Kremlin spokesman said that Russian citizens held in foreign prisons face much more difficult situations. “Some of them were convicted without reason and illegally», He said according to what the news agency reported Reuters.

And I add: “These various examples of discipline in prisons in other countries are often linked to much more cruel and inhuman treatment.“.

Navalny suffers “severe pain“On the back and on the left leg,” said his lawyer, who said he feared for the life of his client. “For me, his state of health is of course extremely problematic. Everyone is afraid for their life and their health», He told the Russian opposition channel Come on lawyer Olga Mijailova, who was finally able to meet the opponent in the penal colony where he is being held.

Navalny, who is serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, survived a poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin last year. The lawyer felt that there could be a link between her current health problems and her poisoning.

The prison services (FSIN) of the region near Moscow where he is imprisoned reacted on Thursday by specifying that medical examinations were carried out at the request of the detainees and that Navalny’s state of health is “considered stable and satisfactory” .

Ibuprofen only

The aforementioned Kremlin spokesman assured that the presidency “does not follow” the situation and “did not ask for any information“On Navalny’s health.

Back in Russia last January, after five months of convalescence in Germany for poisoning, Nalvalny was immediately arrested and convicted of a fraud case dating back to 2014, which he, various NGOs and several Western countries consider to be political.

The main opponent of President Vladimir Putin has been detained since early March in a penal colony in Pokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow, known as one of the toughest in Russia.

Mikhailova told the AFP that a neurologist examined the opponent for his back pain and leg problems, but gave him only tablets of ibuprofen, an analgesic and anti-inflammatory drug.

Volkov estimated that the prison administration could try to hide a possible transfer of the opponent to the infirmary.

Since arriving in Pokrov, Navalny has posted two messages on Instragram with a mocking and optimistic tone. In the first, he said that the prison administration had managed to surprise him: “I did not think that a concentration camp could be built 100 km from Moscow», Wrote the activist.

In the second, he compared his routine as an inmate to that of a Stormtrooper, the Imperial soldiers of the Star Wars saga, due to the rigid discipline of physical exercise in the yard and brisk walking.

Navalny fell into a coma last August in Siberia. After its evacuation to Germany, several European laboratories estimated that he had been poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent developed in Soviet times for military use.

But Moscow has always rejected these conclusions which prove the thesis of an assassination attempt orchestrated by the Russian power. No investigation has been opened in Russia.

Navalny accuses Putin of ordering assassination attempt, which Kremlin insists on rejecting.

The European Union, the United States and Canada have adopted sanctions against senior Russian officials after the poisoning.

(With information from Reuters and AFP)

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