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Supporters and relatives of imprisoned anti-Kremlin activist Vladimir Kara-Murza are increasingly concerned for his welfare, having been denied access to him for a week.
“We don’t know anything about Vladimir since July 2nd when he was last seen by the lawyer,” his wife Evgenia Kara-Murza wrote on X on Tuesday, adding that his lawyers were told he had been transferred to a prison hospital on July 4.
Kara-Murza, a 42-year-old vocal Putin critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is serving a sentence of 25 years for treason and other charges in Omsk, a city more than 2,000 kilometers from Moscow.
At the time of his sentencing in April last year, his supporters argued that imprisonment could cost him his life, with the politician already suffering from a serious nerve condition after twice being mysteriously poisoned.
Since the sudden death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, those fears have intensified.
“Given the Russian authorities’ track record of obfuscation and false statements, his actual location cannot be ascertained,” the Free Russia Foundation, an NGO, said in a statement, calling the refusal to allow his lawyers to visit a breach of Russian and international norms.
Kara-Murza, a dual Russian-British citizen, is rumored to be among those slated for a possible prisoner swap, alongside jailed U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. marine, Paul Whelan.
