"The information that convicted Paul Whelan was allegedly hit by someone in the administration building of the correctional colony is untrue and is a provocation," Interfax quotes a message from the Federal Penitentiary Service for Mordovia.
They noted that "convicted Paul Whelan is serving a sentence assigned to him by the court, in strict accordance with Russian law."
Earlier, lawyer Olga Karlova said that she received a letter from Whelan's brother David, "in which he says that on September 10 Paul was hit while he was in the administration building of the colony."
Earlier it became known that the Russian Ministry of Justice did not receive a petition from the defense of American Paul Whelan, convicted of espionage, to transfer him to serve his sentence in the United States.