Criminal critic Alexei Navalny, captured in Moscow, was taken to a hospital with symptoms of respiratory distress and tested for the coronavirus, the Izvestia newspaper reported on Monday after saying he had a high temperature and cough.
Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, who last week declared a hunger strike and accused prison staff of denying the right treatment for acute back and leg pain, had earlier claimed there was an outbreak of tuberculosis in his ward. .
The 44-year-old politician who demanded according to the West’s release said that three people from his ward were admitted to hospital with tuberculosis, and that it made a dark joke that he could relieve himself of his other ailments.
‘If I have tuberculosis, it can drive out the pain in my back and numbness in my legs. It will be nice, “he wrote on Instagram.
He said prison authorities measured his temperature at 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 degrees Fahrenheit). He also said he coughs badly.
Hours later, Izvestia, a pro-Kremlin newspaper, quoted a statement from the Federal Prison Service that he had been transferred to a sick ward and had undergone various tests, including for the coronavirus.
The TV Rain outlet reports that the Izvestia report did not say where the sick center was, but one of its lawyers said it was inside the IQ-2 correctional penal colony 100 km (60 miles) east of Moscow where he was being held. is. .
Navalny accused the prison authorities there of depriving him of sleep by waking him up at night and refusing to give him proper medical care.
Prison authorities deny sleep deprivation and said earlier that Navalny’s condition was satisfactory and that he had been provided with all necessary treatment. The prison that held him on Monday did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
His allies said late last week that they would hold a protest march outside his jail from Tuesday, unless he is examined by a doctor of his choice and whom he considers to be proper medicine.
Navalny’s lawyers regularly visited him in custody and helped him continue to post messages on social media.
Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said she had called on Putin over Navalny’s “arbitrary arrest and deteriorating health”.
‘The prospect is that #Russia is subject to a slow death. “He needs immediate access to a medical doctor he trusts and he needs to be freed,” she wrote on Twitter.
State media and some members of a prison monitoring group have accused Navalny of dropping his medical problems to keep himself in the public eye, which Navalny and his allies deny.
Additional reporting by Vladmir Soldatkin and Polina Nikolskaya; Edited by Timothy Heritage