Russian court upholds Alexey Navalny’s ‘flight risk’ status

On June 2, the Vladimir region’s Petushinsky Court dismissed Alexey Navalny’s lawsuit against the administration of Penal Colony No.2 (IK-2), which sought to overturn his status as “liable to escape.”

During the consideration of the lawsuit, Navalny stated that because he is considered a flight risk, the prison staff wake him up every hour throughout the night as they conduct checks and take videos of him. Navalny told the court that there “isn’t a single reason” why he was deemed prone to escape and that these conditions violate his right to uninterrupted sleep, which is guaranteed to prisoners.

The prison’s legal representative told the court that Navalny was automatically registered as a flight risk, because he had this status upon arrival: he was deemed liable to escape while still in pre-trial detention in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison in February. She also noted that none of the other prisoners have complained about their sleep being interrupted.

Navalny was in custody in Penal Colony No.2 (IK-2) in the city of Pokrov until mid-April, when he was transferred to a prisoners’ hospital on the grounds of Correctional Facility No. 3 (IK-3) in Vladimir.

Navalny has filed three lawsuits against the administration of IK-2. The two other complaints challenge the prison administration’s decision to withhold Navalny’s books and the “illegal censorship” of the newspapers he receives.