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Chronically ill Russian teenager jailed on terror charges denied medical help

Yegor Balazeykin. Photo: Paper

Yegor Balazeykin. Photo: Paper

A Russian teenager who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2023 for attacking two military recruitment offices with Molotov cocktails that failed to ignite, is being denied essential medical care in prison, his support group said on Monday.

Yegor Balazeykin, 18, who suffers from congenital autoimmune hepatitis, became unwell after eating food his parents brought him during a three-day visit he was allowed to receive last week. It’s thought his reaction was due to his body becoming accustomed to prison food, which according to his parents, consists solely of barley porridge.

“His body can no longer digest normal food,” the support group wrote, adding that Balazeykin had been unable to get out of bed for the duration of his parents’ three-day visit due to “constant vomiting and stomach pain”.

When he was returned to prison, Balazeykin was “totally pale” and “could barely stand”, the group added. Despite not feeling better and “vomiting bile” by Monday, Balazeykin was denied access to the sick bay.

Prison staff at the penal colony in St. Petersburg, where Balazeykin is being held, also refused to allow him to have a scheduled medical examination in December, his support group said, despite Balazeykin’s health condition being officially recognised by the Russian prison service’s medical bureau in November.

Aged just 17 at the time, Balazeykin, was sentenced to six years in a juvenile detention centre in November 2023 on terror charges after he attempted to set fire to two military recruitment offices. By law, he was supposed to remain at the juvenile detention centre until he turned 19, but according to human rights group OVD-Info, prison staff forced him to sign a document requesting his transfer to a maximum security penal colony in August.

Balazeykin’s mother Tatyana branded her son’s sentence “barbaric”, adding that Balazeykin’s autoimmune hepatitis causes liver fibrosis, which is advancing rapidly in prison and that by refusing to take his illness into account, “the court sentenced Yegor to death”.

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