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Court to examine Russian activist’s appeal against prison transfer

In early January, Dadin arrived in Altai from a colony in Karelia following his claims of being tortured

MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/. Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky court will consider on Friday an appeal by jailed Russian activist Ildar Dadin against his transfer from a northwestern Russian jail to a prison in Siberia, a court spokeswoman told TASS.

In early January, Dadin arrived in Altai from a colony in Karelia, northwestern Russia, on Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova’s request to the federal prison authority following his claims of being tortured.

He now filed a request demanding to recognize his transfer as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Dadin is the first person in Russia sentenced for violation of Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code (repeated violations of the rules of public gatherings). In December 2015, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Dadin guilty on four counts of participating in unauthorized protests in Moscow. Dadin was sentenced to three years in a penal colony but then the Moscow City Court reduced his jail term to two and a half years. However, his defense attorney filed an appeal against the sentence to the Russian Supreme Court.

The media publicized Dadin’s letter in autumn 2016 in which he claimed to have been tortured in the colony number 7 in Segezh, Karelia. Members of Russia’s Presidential Council for Civil Society Development and Human Rights said in a report no objective evidence to prove Dadin’s claims of being tortured in a Karelian penal colony could be found so far. Independent doctors who examined Dadin found no signs of injuries on his body.