Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny was transferred Thursday from his Moscow prison, where he had been held since his arrest on his return to Russia in mid-January, to an unknown destination, his team announced.
"They haven't told anyone where he was transferred," one of his lawyers, Olga Mikhailova, told AFP, suggesting he could have gone to the penal colony where he will serve a two-and-a-half-year sentence incarceration.
A close associate of Alexey Navalny, Leonid Volkov, claimed on Twitter that the opponent's family had also not been informed of his whereabouts.
Куда именно этапировали Навального неизвестно;
ни адвокатам, ни родственникам ничего не сообщили.
Напомню еще раз, что по обязательному для России решению ЕСПЧ, являющемуся частью российской судебной системы, Алексей Навальный должен быть немедленно освобожден. # ГдеНавальный?
- Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) February 25, 2021
Russian justice last week confirmed the sentence of the 44-year-old opponent, in a fraud case dating from 2014 that he and many capitals and NGOs denounce as political.
Last week, Alexeï Navalny was also fined for "defamation" against a veteran of the Second World War and several other court cases await him, including a fraud investigation, punishable by ten years in prison.
Protests after his arrest
He was arrested on January 17, on his return from Germany where he spent almost five months in recovery to recover from a poisoning of which he accuses the Kremlin.
The opponent's arrest sparked major protests in Russia, to which the authorities responded with the arrest of more than 10,000 people.
Most of his collaborators were also arrested.