Former Moscow local councillor Alexey Gorinov has had the heating turned off in his cell at the pretrial detention centre in the central Russian city of Vladimir where he is serving his sentence for spreading “false information” about the Russian military, the Free Alexey Gorinov Telegram channel reported on Wednesday.
Prison guards turned off the heating in Gorinov’s cell after a court ruling on Friday added three years to his existing sentence, claiming that there had been an “accident” that affected only Gorinov’s section, according to the channel.
While the heating was temporarily restored over the weekend, when Gorinov’s lawyer visited him on Tuesday, there was again no heat in his cell, the channel added.
Gorinov has also been denied a warm blanket and is forced to wear thermal underwear to combat the cold. Prison guards are also refusing to hand over letters written to Gorinov despite saying that he “received bundles of letters”, the channel’s moderators wrote.
“Perhaps they felt that adding time to a political prisoner’s sentence was not enough, or that he should be tortured further,” the channel added, noting however that Gorinov remained in good spirits and thanked everyone for their “tremendous support”.
Gorinov was originally sentenced to seven years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian military in July 2022 after he made an anti-war speech at a local council meeting in Moscow.
On Friday, however, Gorinov had three years added to his sentence by a military court in Russia’s central Vladimir region after it found him guilty of “justifying terrorism” for comments he made defending a Ukrainian attack on the Crimean Bridge in conversation with an informant while in prison.
“If I am guilty of anything it is that I, as a citizen of this country, allowed this war to go ahead. I could not stop it,” Gorinov told the court in his final statement before being sentenced on Friday.