The men described in phone interviews unbearable cold, repulsive food, unsanitary conditions and beatings in Penal Colony No.
3 of the remote Yamalo-Nenets region, where Mr. Navalny arrived in December to serve out the remainder of his 19-year old prison sentence.
The former inmates said the conditions were especially brutal in the solitary cells where Mr. Navalny is believed to have been confined on the day he was pronounced dead.
But what made the prison, known as IK-3 or the Troika, dreaded even by Russia’s hardened inmates was the exceptional psychological pressure and loneliness, they said.
“It was complete and utter annihilation,” said a former inmate named Konstantin, who spent time in the prison’s solitary confinement cells.
Persons:
Aleksei A, Navalny, ”, Konstantin
Locations:
Russian