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Imprisoned politician Vladimir Kara-Mursa at trial: Internationally classified as a political prisoner
Photo: Maxim Shemetov / REUTERS
Almost a year ago, Kremlin opponent Vladimir Kara-Mursa was sentenced to 25 years in a camp on charges of high treason. He is actually serving his time in a penal camp in Omsk, Siberia. Now the detainee's acquaintances are concerned about the 42-year-old's alleged disappearance.
A few days ago he wanted to send his friend Kara-Mursa a letter to the prison camp in Omsk, Siberia - but then received a response from the prison authorities that the opposition politician had been taken to another prison, Russian human rights activist Alexander Podrabinek wrote on Facebook on Monday . However, the prison system has not announced which camp Kara-Mursa is now being held in.
The Kremlin opponent's wife, Yevgeniya Kara-Mursa, also wrote that she did not know where her husband was.
One of Putin's harshest critics
The opposition figure, who survived poison attacks and is therefore in poor health, is considered one of the harshest critics of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and is internationally classified as a political prisoner. He had criticized Russia's war against Ukraine. His prison sentence for alleged treason is the highest sentence ever imposed on an opposition figure in Russia.
It happens again and again that opponents of the regime who have been imprisoned in the Russian prison system literally disappear for a certain period of time and lose contact with their relatives. In December, for example, there was no sign of life from the opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who until then had been imprisoned in a camp not far from Moscow. He only reappeared after around two weeks - in a prison camp in the Russian polar region.
Human rights activists criticize this practice as harassment on the part of the Russian penal system.
mrc/dpa/Reuters