Alexey Navalny back in penal cell, this time for ‘violating dress code’
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is once again in a penal cell (the so-called “ShIZO”). This is the eighth of the politician’s back-to-back stays in penal confinement, which brings his total time in the ShIZO to 73 days. The maximal legal length of penal confinement is 15 days.
Navalny Team and its publication Sirena report that Navalny notified the court about this new penalty during a hearing on the legality of the labor union he had organized among the convicts at the penal colony.
The politician said to the judge:
Your Honor, since the time of our very memorable first hearing, I’m not getting out of the ShIZO. I could share with you some unique information: that literally 20 minutes before this hearing I was sent to the ShIZO for 11 days. This shows the situation very clearly: this is what happens when any convict meddles in something that involves the penal system’s money, corruption, and its little businesses and commercial schemes.
A ShIZO cell is a special solitary cell for convicts who violate the penal colony’s internal rules. A penal cell is different from ordinary solitary confinement: apart from its physical severity, the prisoner held in a ShIZO is denied privileges like family visits, receiving packages, making phone calls, smoking, or the right to bring his belongings.
The new pretext for locking Navalny in a penal cell is that he “violated the dress code” by failing to wear a jacket.
In mid-November, Navalny was transferred to a so-called “PKT,” or a “cell-type building.” PKTs have cells for solitary confinement, in which a prisoner can be held for up to a year. Confinement in a PKT also limits a prisoner’s rights: he is denied, for example, extended visits by family.
Alexey Navalny is serving his sentence at IK-6, a high-security penal colony in Russia’s Vladimir region. The media have reported multiple cases of prisoner abuse and torture in that colony.