The 44-year-old Navalny went on hunger strike on Wednesday, saying he was suffering from severe back pain that causes numbness in his legs. However, the prison doctor only gave him an analgesic.
Opponents of the opposition leader have informed that even before the hunger strike was announced, Navalni had lost eight kilograms of weight since arriving in the colony because the prison administration is depriving him of sleep.
The authorities have acknowledged that there is a high risk of absconding in the case of Navalny and that he is therefore being woken up every hour at night in accordance with the instructions.
The opposition itself has called it torture.
In his Monday post on Instagram, Navalni informed him that he has a severe cold and the temperature has reached 38.1 degrees.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after returning from Germany, where he recovered more than four months after being poisoned by the war substance Novichok.
Last month, Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence handed down to him in 2014 while receiving treatment in Germany.
Navalni considers the case, which was convicted of fraud in 2014, fabricated, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 2017 found that the right of the opposition to a fair trial was violated in this case. Navalny was compensated, but the Russian Supreme Court upheld the verdict and refused to change it.
The ECtHR requested the release of Navalny in February because it saw the applicant’s health and life as a danger. However, the Russian government rejected the ECtHR’s claim, calling it unlawful interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
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