By Anthony Deutsch
LOEVESTEIN CASTLE, Netherlands (Reuters) – A replica of the two-by-three-metre prison cell holding Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny went on display in the Netherlands on Friday as part of an exhibit entitled “Silenced” about political prisoners through the centuries.
Navalny, the leading Russian opposition figure, nearly died after being poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent while campaigning against Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2020. The film “Navalny”, about the attack and his recovery
in Germany, won the Oscar for best feature documentary.
Upon returning to Moscow in 2021, Navalny was arrested and is being held in solitary confinement at a penal colony where he is serving a nine-year sentence.
“He is deprived of phone calls or meetings with his family, or anyone, actually, except from his lawyers,” said Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, who attended the exhibit’s opening at the Slot Loevestein Museum.
Amid a crackdown by Russian authorities on the opposition, many of Navalny’s most prominent allies left Russia rather than face restrictions or jail at home. Yarmysh has been blacklisted and faces possible imprisonment if she returns.
She said Navalny’s prison conditions are harsh, even by the standards of an authoritarian government.
After weeks with a fever in January, he was not allowed to see a doctor of his choice, Yarmysh said. His cell has no ventilation or warm water and he is held in isolation for extended periods with virtually no way to exercise, she said.
“Right now he’s in such a punishment cell … and the reasons why they put him there is for example, he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt,” she said.
Navalny is not allowed personal belongings beyond one book, a mug and a toothbrush, she added.
Ed Dumrese, director of the Slot Loevestein Museum, said the conditions for prisoners who were held in the cells of the 14th century Dutch castle on the windswept Maas riverbank were most likely better than Navalny’s today.
Dutch thinker Hugo de Groot was sentenced to life imprisonment there and held until he escaped in 1621 in a trunk used to bring him books.
“It would have been cold, but he was able to read as much as he liked and his wife, child and maid were with him in the cell,” said Dumrese during a tour of the exhibit, which will run through February 2024.
(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
