Jailed Kremlin critic Navalny pokes fun at prison officials with demands of moonshine and a kangaroo
MOSCOW (AP) — Imprisoned Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny launched excerpts of his correspondence with prison directors Friday, detailing his sarcastic demands for issues like a bottle of moonshine, a balalaika and even a kangaroo. His requests have been denied.
Responses from prison officials, posted on his social media account apparently by his group, got here after he has spent nearly 180 days in solitary confinement since final summer season at Penal Colony No. 6 within the Vladimir area east of Moscow.
Navalny, 46, is serving a nine-year sentence after being convicted of fraud and contempt of courtroom — prices he says have been trumped up for his efforts to show official corruption and manage anti-Kremlin protests. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
“When you are sitting in a punishment isolation cell and have little entertainment, you can have fun with correspondence with the administration,” wrote Navalny.
Among his denied requests: a megaphone to be given to the prisoner in a close by cell “so he can yell even louder,” and to award one other inmate who “killed a man with his bare hands” with the best rank in karate.
He additionally was turned down for his requests of moonshine, tobacco for rolling cigarettes and the balalaika. But Navalny expressed explicit mock outrage at the directors’ refusal to permit him to maintain a kangaroo in his cell. The politician stated inmates can to have a pet if the prison administration permits it.
“I will continue to fight for my inalienable right to own a kangaroo,” Navalny wrote sarcastically in his social media publish.
Navalny will mark his 47th birthday on Sunday, and there have been calls by his group for protests to assist him.
A Moscow courtroom has set a June 6 date for a listening to for a new trial for Navalny on a cost of extremism, which may hold him in prison for 30 years. He additionally stated an investigator informed him that he additionally would face a separate army courtroom trial on terrorism prices that probably carry a life sentence.
The new prices come as Russian authorities are conducting an intensified crackdown on dissent amid the combating in Ukraine, which Navalny has harshly criticized.
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Associated Press author Elise Morton in London contributed.
