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This video from a surveillance camera in "Penal Colony No. 2" in Pokrov is said to show the shaved Navalny
Photo: LIFE.RU / REUTERS
The address to which it is being sent makes it clear that this letter is unusual: Uliza Franza Schtolwerka No. 6, 601122 Pokrov.
That’s what it says there, in Cyrillic letters on the Bundestag’s stationery.
The letter is signed by eleven members of the Bundestag.
The recipient is the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who is imprisoned in the small town of Pokrov.
Navalny is currently on hunger strike in protest of the detention conditions.
Although he reports serious health problems, he is evidently denied proper medical treatment in the penal colony.
The German parliamentarians write to Navalny that they wanted to »express our appreciation and full solidarity with you.
We want to encourage you. «The letter is available to SPIEGEL.
In addition, the letter also has a second addressee, even if this is not explicitly listed, but only between the lines: the Russian leadership.
The group of MPs makes it clear that they see Nawalny's detention conditions as “targeted torture” and “incompatible with the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture”.
She therefore calls for the Council of Europe to take action in the context of a review of the conditions of detention by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
In addition to the human rights commissioner of the federal government Bärbel Kofler (SPD), the letter's signatories include numerous foreign politicians: Manuel Sarrazin, Omid Nouripour and Jürgen Trittin from the Greens;
Roderich Kiesewetter, Andreas Nick and Jürgen Hardt from the Union;
Dagmar Freitag, Christoph Matschie and Nils Schmid from the SPD as well as the liberals Renata Alt and Bijan Djir-Sarai.
"The reports about Alexei Navalny's hunger strike are depressing," says Manuel Sarrazin, spokesman for the Greens for Eastern European policy and the initiator of the letter.
His placement in custody was “obviously no longer safe.
We mustn't look the other way if the system puts Putin Navalny in danger again. "
The letter will be sent to Russia by post.
But because there are doubts as to whether the letter will actually reach Navalny in this way, the MPs have also sent a digital version directly to the politician's Moscow team.
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