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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, currently serving a 19-year prison sentence in the Vladimir Region, is being transferred to a single cell-type facility (abbreviated as EPKT), as reported in a post on his Facebook account.
“I feel like a tired rock star on the verge of depression. I've reached the top of the charts and there's nothing more to strive for. On the other hand, I'm the one who didn't rocket to the top but dropped to the bottom. And there, as we know, someone can knock from below,” Navalny wrote.
Navalny will be placed in the EPKT for 12 months due to his “incorrigibility.” This is the strictest possible punishment in any Russian prison. Previously, as Navalny points out, he has already been sentenced to SUON (strict conditions of serving a sentence), SHIZO (punishment isolator), and PKT (cell-type room).
On August 4, the Moscow City Court sentenced Navalny to 19 years in a “special regime” penal colony after finding him guilty of financing extremism, the creation of an extremist community, and inciting extremism.
Navalny is currently incarcerated in Penal Colony No. 6 in Melekhovo, located in Russia’s Vladimir Region. On September 22, reports confirmed that the politician had been transferred to the punishment isolation cell (SHIZO) for the twentieth time.
Previously, The Insider had reported on the existence of EPKT-31, located within Colony No. 31 in the Krasnoyarsk Region. This facility sees the passage of up to 200 individuals each year — almost all of them are brutally tortured. Legal representatives face challenges in accessing clients within the facility — a “prison within a prison” — and they are intimidated beforehand not to tell about what happens within the walls of the EPKT.
Those who have passed through EPKT-31 have described the same methods of torture: new arrivals are wrapped in a mattress, their arms and legs are twisted until their ligaments are torn, and they are beaten on the heels with cauldrons. Former inmates have also described prison guards pulling bags or rags pulled over their heads, strangling them until they lose consciousness, as well as waterboarding with towels and kettles, and the application of tasers to the anal region until the devices are fully discharged.