Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in Russian jails, has been transferred to a prison hospital, his wife Yevgenia said on Facebook on Friday, without specifying the reason for his hospitalization. His lawyers said they were not allowed to see him.
The 42-year-old Russian-British political dissident was sentenced in April 2023 after a summary trial to 25 years in prison for treason, spreading false information about the Russian military and belonging to an organization deemed undesirable during the conflict in Ukraine. He was serving his sentence in a penal colony in Omsk, Siberia.
The opponent, who was the victim of two poisonings in 2015 and 2017, has since suffered from polyneuropathy. According to several investigative media outlets, including Bellingcat, The Insider and Der Spiegel, the Russian secret services were involved in these poisonings. According to his lawyers and relatives, his health deteriorated in detention.
One of the last living figures of the Russian opposition
Born in Moscow on 7 September 1981, Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian-British politician and journalist. His family is known for its opposition to the Soviet regime. As a teenager, he moved to the United Kingdom with his mother and obtained British citizenship there. He studied at the University of Cambridge. He first worked as a journalist, then became an advisor to Boris Nemtsov, another Russian opposition leader, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015.
Vladimir Kara-Murza played a significant role in the adoption of the Magnitsky Act in the United States, aimed at punishing Russian human rights abusers. A close friend of Boris Nemtsov, he ran for the State Duma and became deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party. In one of his last statements before his conviction, he expressed regret over his ability to raise awareness among his compatriots and the leaders of democratic countries about the dangers that he believes the current Kremlin regime poses for Russia and the world.
The 41-year-old activist has spent years speaking out against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the government’s crackdown on dissent: “I know the day will come when the darkness that has engulfed our country will lift. Our society will open its eyes and shudder as it realizes what crimes have been committed in its name.” In May, he was honored by the Pulitzer Prize jury for “his impassioned writing, written at great personal risk from his prison cell.”
The UK has called for his immediate release so that he can receive “urgent” medical treatment. Amnesty International considers Vladimir Kara-Murza to be a prisoner of conscience, having been convicted solely on the basis of his political beliefs.
Before his death, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called his conviction “revenge” by the Kremlin “for the fact that he did not die in one go” from the poisonings he suffered. Navalny died in February in his Arctic prison, in circumstances that remain unclear to this day.