Russian politician Alexey Navalny has filed a lawsuit against the Melekhovo penitentiary in the Vladimir region where he is serving his sentence, the Vladimir regional courts’ press service reports.
In his lawsuit, the politician noted that his attorney had not been informed about the buyer of goods that he is manufacturing in prison.
“This information was not provided to him due to the lack of the buyers’ consent regarding the spread of information on their products being manufactures at prisons,” the press service says.
Navalny thinks that there are no legal grounds for refusing to provide this information, so the refusal of the prison officials is unlawful.
Alexey Navalny. Photo by Yevgeny Feldman
“We sew some dumb straps, and honestly, I’m sure that they just throw them away, and they just made this up to overload our weird underground production zone of my ‘prison within a prison’,” Navalny says.
This is the first lawsuit filed by Navalny against the officials of the prison he was transported to on 14 June. The politician earlier said that he had been sent to the same prison unit as convicted murderers.
On 22 March, a Russian court sentenced Navalny to nine years in a high-security prison and a fine of 1.2 million rubles (€20,000) for fraud and contempt of court. Navalny’s appeal was rejected by the Moscow City Court.