A BRIT political prisoner has vanished from a Russian jail and has been sent to an “unknown location”.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, 42, is serving a 25-year prison sentence for “treason” in a hellhole Putin penal colony in Siberia.
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Russia‘s prison service FSIN said Kara-Murza was being transferred from the IK-6 penal colony in Omsk to another location – but it did not say where.
His lawyer Vadim Prokhorov wrote on Facebook: “Today a lawyer for Vladimir Kara-Murza for a second day running was not allowed to visit him in a prison hospital.
“The exact location of the political prisoner is unknown.”
The lawyer was stopped from visiting on Tuesday and Wednesday because Kara-Murza was having a “medical examination”, Prokhorov said.
He slammed the refusal of access as a “gross violation”.
Kara-Murza is due to have a court hearing tomorrow in Omsk over a legal appeal.
It’s understood at least seven Russian dissidents have vanished from Russian prisons in recent days.
Human rights activists say it’s a possible sign that a prisoner swap with the West could be imminent.
Earlier this month, Kara-Murza was rushed from solitary confinement to a jail hospital.
His health is known to be frail after twice being poisoned by Russian secret services.
Kara-Murza – also a journalist – was jailed in April 2023 in a “show trial” for denouncing Putin’s war against Ukraine and calling for Western sanctions.
He was arrested only weeks after Russia‘s invasion and just hours after CNN broadcast an interview with him in which he said Russia was run by “a regime of murderers”.
Fears have been mounting that the dual Russian-British national could face the same fate as prominent opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
Navalny, 47, was found dead in February amid suspicions he was murdered on Putin’s orders.
Kara-Murza, who grew up and studied in Britain, suffers from a nerve disorder after two poisonings in 2015 and 2017 that he blames on the Kremlin.
The father-of-three has repeatedly voiced concerns about his health in prison, his wife said.
He was a close aide to murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, – who was shot dead by a hit squad in Moscow in 2015 – and a vocal critic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After Navalny’s death, Dr Stepan Stepanenko, head of the Forward Strategy foreign policy think-tank, told The Sun that he believes he is Putin’s “next” target.
“Vladimir Kara-Murza is imprisoned on false charges, he is very ill and following Navalny, it is clear that he is next,” he said.
And earlier this year, Kara-Murza’s heartbroken wife, Evgenia, said she fears her husband’s “life is in danger”.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is imprisoned on false charges, he is very ill and following Navalny, it is clear that he is next
Dr Stepan Stepanenko
“I have been afraid for my husband’s life since at least 2015, since that first call that I received about Vladimir collapsing in Moscow and going into [a] coma with multiple organ failure for no reason at all,” she told the BBC.
“I’ve been sleeping with my phone since, dreading yet another call of that sort.
“I believe that my husband’s life is in danger, as are the lives of many other political prisoners in Russian prisons.”
Evgenia said Kara-Murza and other jailed dissidents that are suffering from “serious medical conditions” were being denied proper medical treatment “in order to make the state of their health deteriorate”.
She added that although she is afraid, she will always fight for her husband’s release.
“Continuing the fight is important, telling the stories of the people who are suffering from the regime is important,” she said.
In January, former Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said he was “deeply concerned” over the fate of the dissident after he – similarly to Navalny in December – suddenly disappeared from his prison cell.
Evgenia later discovered he had been transferred to a new Siberian prison and immediately placed in a punishment block.
His only crime was not standing up in time when the guard asked him to “rise” and he was slammed with a “malicious violation”, according to the letter he wrote to his lawyer.
The Cambridge graduate then spent four months in painful solitary confinement.
More than 160 Russian citizens have been imprisoned for opposing the war, according to human rights group OVD-Info – however Kara-Murza’s sentence is the harshest so far.
A total of 19,854 Russians were arrested between February 24, 2022 and January 28, 2024 for speaking out or demonstrating against the invasion.
Life of Alexei Navalny
PUTIN’S best known opponent Alexei Navalny died in prison aged 47.
Here is a timeline that took the leader of the opposition from the face of freedom in Russia and the Kremlin’s biggest foe to a hellhole Siberian prison and onto an early grave.
June 4, 1976 — Navalny is born in a western part of the Moscow region
1997 — Graduates from Russia’s RUDN university, where he majored in law
2004 — Forms a movement against rampant over-development in Moscow
2008 — Gains notoriety for calling out corruption in state-run corporation
December 2011 — Participates in mass protests sparked by reports of widespread rigging of Russia’s election, and is arrested and jailed for 15 days for “defying a government official”
March 2012 – Further mass protests break out and Navalny accuses key Kremlin cronies of corruption
July 2012 — Russia’s Investigative Committee charges Navalny with embezzlement. He rejects the claims and says they are politically motivated
2013 — Navalny runs for mayor in Moscow
July 2013 — A court in Kirov convicts Navalny of embezzlement in the Kirovles case, sentencing him to five years in prison – he appeals and is allowed to continue campaign
September 2013 — Official results show Navalny finishes second in the mayor’s race
February 2014 — Navalny is placed under house arrest
December 2014 — Navalny and his brother, Oleg, are found guilty of fraud
February 2016 — The European Court of Human Rights rules that Russia violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial
November 2016 — Russia’s Supreme Court overturns Navalny’s sentence
December 2016 — Navalny announces he will run in Russia’s 2018 presidential election
February 2017 — The Kirov court retries Navalny and upholds his five-year suspended sentence from 2013
April 2017 – Survives an assassination attempt he blames on Kremlin
December 2017 — Russia’s Central Electoral Commission bars him from running for president
August, 2020 – Navalny falls into a coma on a flight and his team suspects he was poisoned. German authorities confirm he was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Jan 2021 — After five months in Germany, Navalny is arrested upon his return to Russia
Feb 2021 — A Moscow court orders Navalny to serve 2 ½ years in prison
June 2021 — A Moscow court shuts down Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his extended political network
Feb 2022 — Russia invades Ukraine
March 2022 — Navalny is sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court
2023 — Over 400 Russian doctors sign an open letter to Putin, urging an end to what it calls abuse of Navalny, following reports that he was denied basic medication & suffering from slow poisoning
April, 2023 — Navalny from inside prison says he was facing new extremism and terrorism charges that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life
Aug 2023 – A court in Russia extends Navalny’s prison sentence by 19 years
Dec 2023 – He disappears from his prison as his team fear he could be assassination. He then reappears weeks later in one of Siberia’s toughest prisons – the ‘Polar Wolf’ colony
February 16, 2024 – Navalny is found dead inside his Arctic gulag with no official cause of death given