MOSCOW (AP) — Imprisoned Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny mentioned Tuesday he was suing his jail for withholding the Quran, which he supposed to check whereas serving time in a jail exterior Moscow.
Navalny has been on a starvation strike for 2 weeks, protesting jail officers’ refusal to let his doctor study him behind bars after he developed extreme again and leg ache. However he mentioned Tuesday in an Instagram put up that his first lawsuit towards jail officers needed to do with the Muslim holy guide.
“The factor is, they are not giving my Quran. And it pisses me off,” Navalny mentioned, including that “deeply finding out” the Quran was one in all a number of “self-improvement” targets he set for himself whereas in jail. The politician mentioned he hasn’t been given entry to any of the books he introduced or ordered over the previous month, as a result of all of them have to be “inspected for extremism,” which officers say takes three months.
“So I wrote another petition to the (jail) chief and filed a lawsuit,” Navalny mentioned. “Books are our every part, and if I’ve to sue for my proper to learn, then I will be suing.”
Navalny, 44, is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest home opponent. He was arrested in January upon returning to Moscow from Germany, the place he spent 5 months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
A courtroom ordered Navalny in February to serve 2 1/2 years in jail for violating the phrases of his probation, together with when he was convalescing in Germany, from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny has rejected the conviction as fabricated, and the European Сourt of Human Rights discovered it “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.”
Authorities transferred Navalny final month from a Moscow jail to the IK-2 penal colony within the Vladimir area, 85 kilometers (53 miles) east of the Russian capital. The ability within the city of Pokrov is famous for its particularly strict inmate routines, which embrace standing at consideration for hours.
Inside weeks of being imprisoned, Navalny mentioned he developed extreme again and leg pains and was successfully disadvantaged of sleep as a result of a guard checks on him hourly at night time. He went on a starvation strike two weeks in the past, demanding entry to correct remedy and a go to from his physician. Russia’s state penitentiary service claims the politician is receiving all of the medical assist he wants.
Final week Navalny was transferred to the jail’s medical ward with a cough and a fever. In an Instagram put up, he mentioned three of the 15 folks he’s housed with have tuberculosis, a contagious illness that spreads by means of the air.
On Monday, Navalny’s allies mentioned on Twitter that he was transferred again into common housing from the medical unit. The politician has misplaced eight kilograms (over 17 lbs) since beginning the starvation strike and 15 kilograms (33 lbs) in all since arriving on the colony, in accordance with his crew.
Jail officers are “seeing the seriousness of the starvation strike” and are threatening to force-feed him, Navalny’s crew mentioned in a tweet.