Imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny confined to penal cell for eleventh time

Alexey Navalny, the opposition politician serving a prison sentence in the Vladimir region, is once again confined to a penal cell with brutal conditions.

This is the eleventh of Navalny’s back-to-back stays in the so-called “ShIZO,” a 6-by-10-foot cell used to punish inmates for violating prison rules. This time, the pretext for confining Navalny was that he didn’t follow the prescribed form of self-introduction when speaking to a prison official.

Navalny himself reported on being “disciplined” during a court hearing in connection with his complaint about violations of confidentiality in communicating with his legal team. Earlier, the authorities stripped him of the right to privileged communication with attorneys.

This time, Navalny is to spend eight days in penal confinement. This will bring his total time in the ShIZO to 113 days. The maximal duration of penal confinement in a ShIZO under the Russian law is 15 days, due to harsh conditions in this “prison within a prison.” The politician has already spent 105 days in a penal cell. This is more than half of the time he spent in prison.

Groups of Russian doctors, lawyers, and lawmakers have signed open letters to Vladimir Putin, expressing their indignation with the cynical efforts to ruin Navalny’s already poor health.