Putin critic Alexei Navalny sick after suspected poisoning in jail, says rep – National

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been in prison since 2021, is suffering from severe stomach pains that may have been caused by a slow-acting poison, his spokesperson said Thursday. rice field.
Navalny representative Kira Yarmysh told Reuters: ambulance On April 7, he was summoned to the Russian maximum security IK-6 penal colony where he is being held. Navalny reportedly has not received a diagnosis.
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Navalny, 46, was in severe pain and was unable to eat prison food as a result. Yarmysh said he has been banned from buying alternative food since Monday and is not allowed to receive parcels containing food.
Anna Veduta, vice president of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., first told Associated Press Navalny. got sick Early on Friday, he was released from the punishment cell and placed in a conventional cell.
Veduta said Navalny has lost 18 pounds in the last 15 days. She told the Associated Press that his allies believe he was being “slowly dosed with low doses of poison” from unidentified pills given to him in prison.
The Kremlin has declined to comment on Navalny’s health or suspected poisoning. Officials said the inmates’ health is under federal prison jurisdiction. In the past, prison services have insisted that Navalny always receives proper medical treatment.
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Ruslan Shaveddinov, a close ally of Navalny, told The Guardian of the politician’s situation:DeadlyHe said prison authorities refused to admit Navalny.
Shaveddinov said prison authorities were trying to “break” him.
Navalny is currently serving an 11 1/2 year prison sentence for fraud and contempt of court. He said he believed the ruling was an attempt by the Kremlin to silence him about his career in combating official corruption in Russia.
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On Tuesday, Navalny’s social media accounts run by his allies read: murmured According to Navalny’s Twitter account, he was released from a “schizo” or solitary confinement punishment cell on the night of April 7. In a thread about corruption in prison purchasing practices, Navalny called his conditions “extremely infernal.”
Navalny has been poisoned in the past. During a trip to Siberia in 2020, Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. He blames Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin for the poisoning. After five months of recuperation in Germany, Navalny returned to Moscow in 2021, where he was detained. The Kremlin denied poisoning Navalny.
German government spokesman Christiane Hoffmann said on Wednesday that Germany had taken “with great concern” reports of Navalny’s declining health. She said Berlin wants “the inhumane treatment he appears to be suffering in prison to be lifted” and that Russian authorities will ensure that he is treated and released. He added that he wanted
Last month, a documentary about Navalny won an Oscar. The film chronicles the life and career of Mr. Navalny, a lawyer who publicly criticized Putin and the Kremlin’s mass corruption, right up to his final prison sentence.
— Using files from Associated Press
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