Alexey Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, said Tuesday that prison authorities plan to open another felony case against the politician in response to an incident in which they tried to provoke him into using violence against a fellow prisoner.
According to Kobzev, prison employees put an inmate with “poor hygiene” in Navalny’s cell, causing it to smell so bad that it was “impossible to enter.” When Navalny refused to go in, Kobzev said, the guards called a “response team in bulletproof vests and helmets,” who proceeded to “drag” Navalny into the cell.
Kobzev emphasized that while Navalny did not physically resist the guards, they used violence against him, including by kneeing him in the groin.
Once Navalny was in the cell, he took the other inmate by the scruff of the neck and “dragged him to the exit,” but did not apply violence, despite “prison rules” dictating that he should. After that, Navalny was “pinned to the wall” by the response team.
After that, according to Kobzev, prison authorities told Navalny that they plan to open a new felony case against him for disorderly conduct.
Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, noted that this will be the 10th criminal case against the politician, who is already facing up to 35 years in prison.
Navalny in prison
- Alexey Navalny needed ambulance due to unexplained symptoms. His lawyer suspects slow poisoning.
- Navalny calls for Saakashvili’s release from prison for medical treatment
- Anti-Corruption Foundation Director Ivan Zhdanov says FSB implicating him in pro-war blogger’s death as pretext for increasing Navalny’s prison sentence
“Prison rules”
Navalny wrote in December that, “According to prison rules, I have to kick this dude out of his cell – beat him or threaten him, that’s up to me.
But hitting him is, first of all, instantly a criminal offense — there are video cameras everywhere, that’s the point of provocation… it is written in the law: if a person feels threatened, then he should ‘immediately’ be transferred to another cell. In the prison environment it is a condemnable act, but still.”