Relatives of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny are worried about the health of the opponent, who claims to be "tortured" by sleep deprivation in his penal colony.
The prison services say for their part that his state of health is "stable and satisfactory".
Jailed Russian opponent Alexei Navalny suffers from "severe pain" in his back and right leg, his lawyer said Thursday, indicating fears for the "life and health" of his client, who also claims to be "tortured" by deprivation sleep.
"For me his state of health is of course extremely problematic (...) everyone fears for his life and his health", told the Russian opposition channel Dojd Olga Mikhaïlova, who finally met the opponent in his colony prison, after failing to see him on Wednesday.
"Use of torture by deprivation of sleep"
On Wednesday, the lawyer had sounded the alarm and claimed not to have had access to the 44-year-old anti-corruption activist, who she said recently complained of "severe back pain" and began to no longer feel his legs.
The latter narrowly survived nerve agent poisoning last year, which he blames in the Kremlin.
And the lawyer ruled that there may be a connection between her current problems and her intoxication in 2020.
In a complaint to the Russian security services, the opponent also indicates that his jailers deprive him of sleep, seeing it as a form of torture, according to the text of this letter published on his site.
The guards "deprive me of sleep, it is de facto a recourse to torture by sleep deprivation", he writes, explaining that he is woken up "eight times a night" by the men of the Russian penitentiary where he is held .
A penal colony deemed to be very tough
The prison services (FSIN) of the Vladimir region, near Moscow, where the opponent is imprisoned, reacted Thursday morning by asserting that medical examinations had been carried out "at the request of the detainees" and that the state of Alexeï Navalny was "considered stable and satisfactory".
Sentenced in February to two and a half years in prison in a fraud case dating from 2014, the most visible detractor of Vladimir Putin has been imprisoned since the beginning of March in a penal colony in Pokrov, 100 km from the Russian capital and famous for being very tough.