Before being recruited by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner mercenary Vadim Akimov was in the IK-6 penal colony with Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Now he reported wild threats from prison authorities for talking to the Kremlin critic.
It was a conversation with Navalny that immediately broke the camel’s back, reports the TV channel “Navalny LIVE”. “They simply explained to me: if they see me again with Alexei Navalny and I talk to him on certain topics, then I will simply disappear without a trace – forever.”
Akimov can be seen in the following tweet. He spoke publicly about his meeting with Navalny, about torture, how the wounded are treated in Prigozhin’s unit, and how mercenaries were shot simply to set an example. The recordings also provide insight into the particularly feared penal colony IK-6. According to Akimov, it is “the most terrible place in Russia”.
Bullying and psychoterror in Russian prison
Recently, Navalny’s lawyer Wadim Kobsev reported on the deteriorating health condition of the 46-year-old in solitary confinement. On Wednesday, after the end of his 15-day solitary confinement in the Melekhovo penal camp in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, the politician was immediately transferred back to solitary confinement, the 14th time since last summer.
Navalny’s confidants said on his Telegram channel that the iron prison principle, which applied even in Soviet times, had been broken for him, whereby a prisoner was given at least one day of rest after 15 days of solitary confinement. The conditions in the cramped isolation cell are particularly harsh. Prisoners cannot buy extra food there or receive visits from relatives. The politician recently reported that his time for writing letters had been reduced and that his daily walk in the prison courtyard had been moved to the morning so that he did not see the sun there.
Navalny must answer for “extremism”.
Meanwhile, a new trial against Navalny began behind closed doors in Moscow. Prison authorities allegedly provoked the Kremlin critic to open a new trial against him. The politician spoke of an “absurd charge”. He is accused of preparing terrorist attacks in prison. “I will wait 30 years in this case and then apparently life in the next one,” he said via video link on Wednesday during an initial technical hearing where the court will decide how much time the defendant will have to hear the case. accusations.
The press was largely excluded from the process. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch said the court tried to prevent the politician from communicating with the media. Internationally, Navalny, who has been officially convicted of fraud, is considered a political prisoner. Human rights activists speak of arbitrariness to silence opponents of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin critic was arrested on his return from Germany in January 2021 and convicted of violating probation terms and fraud. In August 2020, he collapsed during a flight within Russia. First he was treated in Russia and then transferred to the Berlin Charité. There, poisoning with a nerve gas was diagnosed. The Moscow government has denied allegations that Russian authorities attempted to assassinate him.
Source: Krone
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