Alexei Navalny:

Martyrdom in a prison of cruelty …

Lawyer Navalny dared to criticize Russia's tyrant Vladimir Putin even while behind bars.

(Bild: APA/AP Photo/Denis Kaminev)

In 2020, regime opponent Navalny survived a poison attack - now he died in a Siberian prison camp as an indomitable hero of freedom.  

"I feel that you are close to me every second, and I love you more and more", this touching Valentine's greeting was the last message from 47-year-old Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny from the "Polar Wolf" prison camp to his wife Julia (47) on February 14. Two days later, she learned of her husband's sudden death in Munich - curiously enough at the security conference.

As a woman at the side of this imprisoned anti-corruption activist, who had fought like a wolf against Putin's potentate and for freedom and democracy in Russia, she knew about the brutal psychological terror to which her Alexei had been subjected. She accepted the fact that she too was and is being persecuted and shadowed.

Navalny knew from the outset that, as an opposition fighter in the Siberian prison of cruelty, he was to be broken with brute force and forced to give up his resistance with nervous terror. He tried to endure the ordeal with humor and indomitable willpower.

Torture to psychologically break public enemy no. 1
But in December, Putin's "public enemy no. 1" disappeared in Siberian Kharp, the prison of cruelty. The list of torture methods used in the IK-3 penal colony, 1900 kilometers north-east of Moscow, reads like the manual of a cabinet of horrors. Horrible brutalities designed to turn the 1.90-meter giant Navalny into a dwarf of submissiveness. Beatings, hourly awakenings at night, punishment in the "punishment isolator", a 2 x 2.5 meter concrete hole in which up to seven prisoners were crammed.

In a Siberian labor camp, the opposition's will to resist was to be broken: with sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and psychological terror.

(Bild: REUTERS)

In a Siberian labor camp, the opposition's will to resist was to be broken: with sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and psychological terror.

(Bild: REUTERS)

Moreover, the high-security camp for serious criminals is a place from which escape is impossible! The fact that the facility is surrounded by a 5-meter barbed wire fence is superfluous. Because outside the dungeon, escapees can expect nothing but tundra and impenetrable wilderness - in short, IK-3 is an Alcatraz in the ice hell of Siberia.

Former, long-lost family happiness of the Nawalnys

(Bild: APA/AP Photo/Andrew Lubimov)

The fact that the prison gates have nevertheless opened for a number of serious criminals in recent months is due in an absurd way to dictator Putin (71). The former intelligence officer recruited killer wolves from the "polar wolf" for his war of aggression against Ukraine: freedom for murder on the front line! A violation of international law against which Navalny had always raised his voice.

Of his 1120 days in prison, he had to endure the worst humiliations in the last months of his life. The henchmen were unable to break his will, but they destroyed his body with vicious malice

Karl Habsburg will uphold his friend Alexei's ideas of freedom. And widow Julia swears: "With this murder you have killed half of my heart and soul, but there is still the half that tells me that I must not and never give up."