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Alexej Navalny at a memorial march for the Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov (archive image)
Photo:
Pavel Golovkin / dpa
The detained Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has made serious allegations against the prison guards in his prison camp.
He was "tortured by sleep deprivation," said Navalny in an official complaint posted on his website.
He is woken up eight times at night.
Confidants of Nawalnys reported, however, that the health of the Kremlin critic was deteriorating in the detention center of the notorious IK-2 prison camp.
Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova had already reported a deterioration in Navalny's health on Wednesday.
The opposition politician recently complained of severe back pain and has been suffering from numbness in his leg since this week, she said.
"His right leg is in dire condition," she said on a video on Telegram's Medusa-Live news channel.
Navalny could no longer do anything with the leg.
Prison authorities: condition of Navalny's "satisfactory"
The Russian prison authorities said on Thursday that Navalny had been examined by a doctor.
"On the basis of the test results, his state of health was rated as stable and satisfactory."
Navalny's closest colleague Leonid Volkov doubted the information provided by the Russian prison authorities.
He feared Navalny was in the infirmary and "something very bad was going to happen to him," wrote Volkov on Twitter.
The opposition's lawyers were allowed to visit the prison camp east of Moscow after they were denied access on Wednesday.
According to Mikhailova, Navalny was apparently being investigated in the detention center.
"They did some MRI, too," said the lawyer.
In the end, Navalny was only prescribed the pain reliever ibuprofen as a tablet and ointment, and there was no further treatment.
"What a terrible horror," it said in a comment by Nawalny's spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch on Twitter.
Sarrazin: "Impression that Navalny's recovery should be revised"
Manuel Sarrazin, member of the Bundestag for the Green Party, called on the German government to demand that the Kremlin "have full transparency about Navalny's whereabouts and state of health."
“We are very concerned about the reports on Alexei Navalny's health.
One can get the impression that the partial recovery after the Novichok poisoning should be revised. "
Navalny, who was the victim of a poison attack in August, had temporarily recovered from the attack in the Berlin Charité.
At the beginning of the year he returned to Russia and in February was sentenced to several years in a prison camp in a trial that was heavily criticized internationally.
The Russian judiciary has accused him of violating probation conditions in a previous criminal case while he was recovering from the attack in Germany.
ssp / dpa / AFP / Reuters
