Human rights advocate Moazzam Begg returns to Afghanistan to battle demons and champion justice in the shadow of war.
Haunted by nightmares of torture and abuse, British human rights campaigner Moazzam Begg decides to return to Afghanistan to confront the horrors of his past.
Moazzam was detained at the notorious Bagram and Guantanamo Bay prisons without charge or trial, before being released in 2003. Ever since, Moazzam has fought for the rights of those imprisoned during the so-called, US-led war on terror.
In Afghanistan, Moazzam advocates for the freedom of Mohammad Rahim, the last Afghan held in Guantanamo Bay.
As the nation grapples with the scars of war under new Taliban leadership, can Moazzam ever make peace with his past?
Echoes of Bagram is a film by Michael McEvoy and Horia El Hadad.
Alabama, a US state with 165 people on death row, is on Thursday night expected to attempt the first-ever execution by an untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.
Only two years after a botched execution attempt on him, Kenneth Eugene Smith will once again be made to face death, this time through an experimental technique that pumps pure nitrogen gas into a person’s lungs instead of the regular air that has the oxygen humans need to breathe.
Smith’s execution in the United States is moving forward despite criticism from rights groups, some doctors and the jury for the case itself voting against the death penalty.
What’s the case about, how does the nitrogen hypoxia method work, and what are lawyers and rights groups saying about it?
Who is Kenneth Eugene Smith and what did he do?
Smith, 58, is one of two men convicted for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, 45, on March 18, 1988.
Smith and John Forrest Parker were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, Charles Sennett Sr, who was in debt and wanted to collect insurance money from her death.
Parker was executed by lethal injection in 2010 while Sennett Sr committed suicide after he became a prime suspect in the case, according to court records.
Smith claims that while he was present at the site of the killing, he did not take part in the attack. He has been on death row since 1996.
The 58-year-old is the first-ever person to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia [File: Alabama Department of Corrections via AP Photo]
Why is this the second time Smith is facing a death sentence?
The attempt was called off at the last minute because authorities struggled to insert an intravenous line that would have transmitted deadly drugs through his veins.
Smith’s lawyers have argued that a second execution attempt would exacerbate the psychological trauma he has been experiencing since the first attempt.
When is Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution?
His execution is set to take place within a 30-hour time frame beginning at 12am local time (06:00 GMT) on Thursday and expiring at 6am (12:00 GMT) the following day.
Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has argued against the death penalty in several countries including the US, points out that executions are commonly held only in the middle of the night.
“And that’s because we’re basically ashamed of what we do,” he told Al Jazeera.
Stafford Smith has had to watch the executions of six of his clients in the US. “And each time I’ve come out of the execution chamber, I look up at the stars and say to myself, honestly, can we say that this makes the world the most civilised place?”
What is nitrogen hypoxia and how does it work?
Nitrogen hypoxia is a method of execution where a respirator mask is placed over the inmate’s face, and their breathing air is replaced with pure nitrogen gas.
This deprives the individual of oxygen, leading to unconsciousness in a few seconds, and ultimately causing death in several minutes.
Smith’s lawyers have raised concerns over the untested nature of the method that could go awry. For instance, the mask may not be airtight enough and cause Smith to choke on his own vomit.
Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour said that such claims are speculative, and suggested that he could opt “to have his last meal earlier in the day, or the day before the planned execution”, to minimise such a risk.
LaCour also told federal judges that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.”
According to Stafford Smith, the lawyer, nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method originated from a television programme 15 years ago, featuring former British Member of Parliament Michael Portillo seeking alternatives to US execution methods.
Portillo discovered that the Royal Netherlands Air Force was experimenting with low nitrogen in the air for its pilots. He claimed it was a more humane way to execute people than lethal injection — he described a sort of euphoria before he drifted into unconsciousness when he tried breathing in nitrogen himself.
An industrial mask will be used to pump nitrogen gas into Smith’s breathing air [File: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo]
How does lethal injection work?
Protocol suggests that inmates must go through a “three-drug procedure” where they are first given an anaesthetic to make them unconscious. Most states use “barbiturate” for this step, which has become difficult to obtain in the US.
Next, a substance is given to paralyse muscles, and then a final drug is given in a dose that stops the heart. Several US states, including Alabama since 2013, have switched over to a “one-drug procedure” where only barbiturate or its alternative is given in a lethal dose.
In either case, the entire process up until death can last up to five minutes. However, botched lethal injections have sometimes taken more than two hours before death. The procedure also requires the inmate to be strapped to a gurney.
Smith suffered a botched execution attempt in 2022, after 26 years on death row [File: Dave Martin/Photo]
Does Smith get to choose how he is executed?
After Smith suffered the botched execution attempt by lethal injection in 2022, he appealed against a repeat.
Enter the US judicial system. Two US Supreme Court judgements have determined that if convicts on death row claim that a particular method of execution is unacceptable to them because it is too cruel, they are required to choose another method that is available in that state.
Alabama, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi, has also approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to the lethal injection. That meant that when Smith said he did not want a second stab with a lethal injection, he was in effect also forced to accept nitrogen hypoxia as the method of his execution. California, Texas, Florida and Alabama are the US states with the most inmates on death row. Texas has carried out, by far, the most executions over the last 50 years.
What else do we know about execution methods in the US?
Lethal injection is the most common form of execution in the US, and was also introduced as an experimental and “gentler” method in 1982.
Although there is backlash against the experimental nature of nitrogen hypoxia, Stafford Smith points out that it only continues with a macabre US tradition. “We’ve experimented with killing our citizens for a long time, if you go back to the early days of the electric chair,” he said.
The drugs used for executions have become increasingly difficult to find following a European Union law that bans pharmaceutical companies from selling substances to prisons for them to be used in executions.
That in turn has left US correctional facilities searching for other options to execute people.
Meanwhile, Alabama alone has carried out three botched attempts at lethal injection since 2018.
The last time the US put someone to death using gas was in 1999, when a convicted murderer was executed using hydrogen cyanide gas.
Is Kenneth Smith’s execution against the US Constitution?
Smith’s attorneys argue that a second execution attempt, and specifically the use of nitrogen gas, may violate the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment.
They explain that its untested nature and the risks associated with it could constitute as cruel and unusual.
In 1996 the jury on Smith’s case voted 11-1 against execution and suggested a life sentence instead. Although the judge overruled that decision, Smith would not be on death row if tried today after Alabama abolished judicial override on a life sentence in 2017.
“Of course, what they want to do is not apply that rule retroactively to this case”, said Stafford Smith. “So this is a classic example of the way that the American system operates”.
What do doctors and human rights organisations say?
Rights organisations, including the Death Penalty Information Center and United Nations, have raised concerns about the state’s plan to use nitrogen gas.
Four UN Special Rapporteurs said in a statement earlier this month, that the method may lead to a “painful and humiliating death”.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland, also urged Alabama to abandon plans to execute Smith using the “novel and untested” method.
Shamdasani highlighted the UN’s opposition to the death penalty in principle, and added that nitrogen hypoxia is not an acceptable euthanasia method for most mammals, citing the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), which recommends giving even large animals a sedative when being euthanised in this manner, she said.
Some organisations are also considering urging businesses and tourists to boycott Alabama if the execution proceeds.
Hebron, occupied West Bank – Lama Khater sits quietly, ready to talk but seemingly exhausted. The mother of five’s face is pale and her lips dry, but an air of relief hangs around her.
The 47-year-old had just been released from prison at the end of November, part of the sixth batch of Palestinian prisoners Israel released in exchange for Israeli captives released from Gaza by Hamas.
Khater had been in prison for about a month, an exceptionally painful one, it seemed. She was one of hundreds of Palestinians who had been arrested after the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the ensuing Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians there to date.
After Israeli forces stormed her home in Hebron and arrested her, she was shuttled from one detention centre to the other, unsure of what she was charged with or what would happen to her next.
Dirty and cramped
A writer and journalist who has covered crimes and violations committed by the Israeli occupation – and who has been in Israeli jails herself – Khater found herself subjected to pain and indignities all over again.
She had been detained in the past for 13 months but said her detention after October 7 was “incomparable” to the previous jail time.
Writer Lama Khater with four of her children, clockwise from left, Yaman, Osama, Bissan and Yahya [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera]
“Handcuffed” with plastic zip ties that dug painfully into her wrists, Khater was thrown on the floor of the army jeep and taken to the Kiryat Arba settlement camp.
She could not see the face of her husband Hazem al-Fakhouri or her five terrified children – Osama, 26, Bissan, 23, Yaman, 18, Izz al-Din, 15, and Yahya, 7 – as she was driven away.
Her interrogation began in Kiryat Arba, and during the first session, the Israeli officers threatened her with rape, among other things, she said.
“They threatened to kill me, my family, burn my house down,” Khater recalled.
They also, she added, threatened to deport her to Gaza and more, telling her that she was a prisoner of war and they could do whatever they wanted.
From there, Khater was moved for four days to Hasharon Prison, where she was held with five other Palestinian women in a tiny cell built for one prisoner and “extremely dirty”, she said.
They did not have access to water to clean the cell either, she added, explaining that their water supply was cut off for eight hours a day.
There was so little room that the six women had to take turns to sit and sleep.
After Hasharon, she was moved to Damon Prison in northern Israel, where she was strip-searched and insulted. She also saw other prisoners being “badly beaten”.
Missing her family, suffering in prison
Sentenced to six months of administrative detention – which allows Israeli authorities to hold people indefinitely without charge – Khater resigned herself to her fate and wondered how her children and husband were doing without her.
But then she met a woman from Hebron who had just been rounded up in the Israeli dragnets and the woman told her that her husband had also been arrested, taken from their home on November 8 two weeks after she had been taken and also held under administrative detention since.
That meant that their five children were alone, probably even more worried and scared now that both their parents had been taken.
Khater couldn’t help but wonder if the raid into their home frightened her children, especially seven-year-old Yahya.
“A Shabak officer came to gloat at me, smiling and saying: ‘Your kids are now alone’,” Khater said.
Twenty-three-year-old Bissan told Al Jazeera that she had to leave her job and become “both a mother and father” to her siblings because the three youngest are in school and need constant care and attention.
Khater did not worry much about the Israeli officers’ threats; she was too happy to be going home [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera]
She would take care of their food and clothing and tend to their emotional needs, she added.
“Yahya used to ask me and my father about my mother – whether she was eating, if she was okay, and when she’s coming home,” Bissan said.
The questions became even harder to answer when al-Fakhouri was also arrested, she said.
During that time, Khater was shocked at the level of inhumane treatment the Damon guards meted out to the women.
Sometimes they would use pepper spray point-blank against the women for any perceived slight.
They would also put prisoners in solitary confinement, severely limit their access to food and canteens to buy necessities, and deny them sanitary pads, she said.
Finally, she was moved to Ofer Prison at the end of November, to wait in a cold cell for hours with neither food nor water until she was freed at dawn.
Up to the very last minute, the officers and guards were threatening her.
“They told me that any celebration is prohibited and that I was forbidden from receiving any well-wishers upon my release,” she said, adding that the Israeli officers also warned her not to publish on social media.
Bissan, 23, had to leave her job and become ‘mother and father’ to her siblings [Mosab Shawer/Al Jazeera]
“They said they would re-arrest me if their ‘rules’ were broken,” she said.
But she was not so concerned, as she was filled with “joy and happiness” at the thought of seeing her children.
“Everyone knows that the most difficult thing for a mother is being away from her children.”
Like all the other prisoners freed in the deal, Khater felt happiness overshadowed by the massacres being committed against Palestinians in Gaza, she said.
Since October 7, Israeli authorities have arrested nearly 6,000 people in the occupied West Bank while Israeli forces or settlers have killed more than 270 Palestinians during that time in individual attacks and near-nightly raids, which have also escalated since the outbreak of war.
Several Palestinian prisoners, who like Khater were released as part of the exchange deal, have spoken out about mistreatment in Israeli jails.
Some reported physical abuse, some recalled being kept in isolation for prolonged periods, while others said Israeli prison guards harassed or assaulted them.
Guards also confiscated personal possessions, including radios, and barred prisoners from gaining access to any news.
‘Polar Wolf’ colony is among the harshest in Russia’s prison system, whose inmates have been convicted for grave crimes.
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny says he has been isolated in a small punishment cell for an alleged minor breach at a remote prison colony north of the Arctic Circle.
“I got seven days in SHIZO,” Navalny said, referring to the punishment cell where he has to serve a week.
Prison officials accused him of refusing to “introduce himself in line with protocol”, the Kremlin critic posted on Tuesday on X, with his account routinely updated via his allies.
Navalny was recently tracked to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow, after he went missing in early December.
The “special regime” or “Polar Wolf” colony is among the harshest in Russia’s prison system, located in a place with severe winters. Most inmates have been convicted of grave crimes. Kharp is about 100km (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coalmines were part of the Soviet gulag camp system.
In his typical sardonic tone, Navalny said, the temperature of his prison yard walks had “never been colder” than -32 degrees Celsius (-25 degrees Fahrenheit), adding that “even at that temperature you can walk for more than half an hour, but only if you have time to grow a new nose, ears, and fingers”.
This marks the 24th time in SHIZO for the opponent of President Vladimir Putin. His allies say Navalny has spent a total of 273 days under such conditions.
“The idea that Putin is satisfied with the fact that he put me in a hut in the far north and that I am no longer being tortured in SHIZO was not only cowardly but also naive,” he posted.
He shared a photo of the small space in his cell where he takes his daily walks: “11 steps from the wall and 3 to the wall — not much to walk, but at least there’s something, so I go for a walk.”
5/10 In the photo below, you can see my walking yard. 11 steps from the wall and 3 to the wall — not much to walk, but at least there’s something, so I go for a walk. pic.twitter.com/8VCUVEfbaJ
Navalny has been imprisoned since January 2021 when he returned to Moscow after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Before he was arrested, he led massive campaigns against corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests.
Jailed on charges of extremism, he saw his sentence extended to 19 years in 2023.
From his cramped and freezing cell, Navalny mentioned a scene in the 2015 film, The Revenant, in which Leonardo DiCaprio shelters in the carcass of a horse.
“I don’t think that would have worked here. A dead horse would freeze in 15 minutes,” Navalny said. “We need an elephant here, a hot elephant, a fried one.”
“But where am I going to get a hot, roasted elephant in Yamal, especially at 6:30 in the morning? So I will continue to freeze,” he posted.
Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, posted on X recently: “It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world.”
Ecuador has declared a state of emergency after an “extremely dangerous” druglord escaped from maximum-security detention and unrest broke out at several prisons in the violence-plagued country.
President Daniel Noboa, in office since November, announced a 60-day mobilisation of soldiers in Ecuador’s streets and prisons as authorities searched for Jose Adolfo Macias, alias Fito.
There would also be a curfew from 11pm (04:00 GMT) to 5am (10:00 GMT) daily, the president said.
The state of emergency, Noboa said in a video on Instagram, would give members of the armed forces “all the political and legal support” they need to carry out their duties in a battle against what he described as “narcoterrorists”.
“We will not negotiate with terrorists nor rest until we return peace to all Ecuadorans,” Noboa said.
On Sunday, Fito, the leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, was found missing by police conducting an inspection of a prison in the port city of Guayaquil.
The 44-year-old, who is said to have instilled terror in his fellow inmates, is believed to have escaped just hours before police arrived, according to presidency spokesperson Roberto Izurieta. He was apparently tipped off.
“The full force of the state is being deployed to find this extremely dangerous individual,” Izurieta told domestic television on Monday.
He said the prison system had failed and bemoaned “the level of infiltration” by criminal groups.
The prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, said it had opened an investigation and filed charges against two prison officials “allegedly involved in the escape” of Fito.
‘He must be found’
Fito had been serving a 34-year sentence for organised crime, drug trafficking and murder since 2011.
This is his second prison escape – the last was in 2013 when he was recaptured after three months.
A week before his death, anti-cartel candidate Villavicencio said he had received threats from Fito.
Long a peaceful haven between top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as rival gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
Gang wars largely play out in the country’s prisons, where criminal leaders such as Fito wield immense control.
Some 460 inmates have been killed in these battles since 2021, and their bodies are often found dismembered, decapitated or incinerated.
Izurieta said Fito, who studied law in prison, was a “criminal with extremely dangerous characteristics, whose activities have characteristics of terrorism”.
“The search continues … He will be found, he must be found,” said the spokesperson.
After Fito’s escape, unrest broke out at penitentiaries in six of Ecuador’s 24 provinces on Monday, according to the SNAI prison authority, with guards taken hostage at some of the facilities.
Heavily armed police and soldiers entered the prisons of El Oro, Loja, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Azuay and Pichincha, after which the military distributed images of half-naked inmates rounded up in courtyards.
The SNAI said there had been no injuries due to the “incidents”.
Other videos on social media, not verified by the authorities, purported to show hooded inmates threatening officials with knives as they pleaded for their lives.
On the campaign trail, he proposed creating a separate judicial system for the most serious crimes, militarising the borders with Colombia and Peru, and jailing the most violent offenders on barges offshore.
Last week, he announced the construction of two new maximum-security prisons similar to those built by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who has led a controversial crackdown on gangs credited with drastically reducing his country’s murder rate.
The fanatic is suing the state in a bid to force it to end his isolation in prison.
A lawsuit launched by far-right fanatic and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik accusing the state of abusing his human rights has opened in Norway.
Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage in 2011, appeared in a court set up in the high-security jail in which he is serving his sentence on Monday. By accusing Norway’s Ministry of Justice of breaching his human rights, he hopes to force the authorities to end his years in isolation.
The 44-year-old killer’s lawyer laid out an argument that the conditions of his detention violated his human rights.
“He has been isolated for about 12 years,” Oeystein Storrvik told the hearing. “He is only in contact with professionals, not with other inmates.”
In earlier court filings, Storrvik had argued the isolation had left Breivik suicidal and dependent on the anti-depression medication Prozac.
Breivik claims the isolation he has faced since he started serving his prison sentence in 2012 amounts to inhumane punishment under the European Convention on Human Rights. He failed in a similar attempt in 2016 -17, when his appeal was denied by the European Court of Justice.
The extremist, who distributed copies of a manifesto before his attack, is suing the state and also asking the court to lift restrictions on his correspondence with the outside world.
He killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo then gunned down 69 others, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp. It was Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity.
Breivik spends his time in a dedicated section of Ringerike prison, the third prison in which he has been held. His separated section includes a training room, a kitchen, a TV room and a bathroom, pictures from a visit last month by news agency NTB showed.
He is allowed to keep three budgerigars as pets and let them fly freely in the area, NTB reported.
Extremist influence
Lawyers representing the justice ministry say Breivik must be kept apart from the rest of the prison population because of the continuing security threat he poses.
They said in their court filing that his isolation was “relative” given that he has contacts with guards, a priest, health professionals and, until recently, an outside volunteer. Breivik has said he no longer wishes to see the latter.
He also sees two inmates for an hour every other week, the lawyers pointed out, noting that the control over his contact with the outside world is justified by the risk that he will inspire others to commit violent acts.
“Specifically, this applies to contacts with far-right circles, including people who wish to establish contact with Breivik as a result of the terrorist acts on 22 July 2011,” they said in the filing.
Breivik was cited as an inspiration by Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.
In this latest case, the judge’s verdict – there is no jury – will be issued in coming weeks.
Breivik was sentenced in 2012 to 21 years of detention, with a provision allowing him to be held indefinitely if he is still considered dangerous.
Annual amnesty marking Independence Day takes place during crisis in the north that poses threat to military rulers.
Myanmar’s military government has pardoned more than 9,000 prisoners, including 114 foreign nationals, to mark the country’s Independence Day.
Friends and families of prisoners gathered outside the high-security Insein Prison in the commercial capital Yangon as the releases were set to start on Thursday and expected to take place over several days.
The identities of those slated for release were not yet known, and there was no indication that any political prisoners would be freed.
Thursday’s announced amnesty, part of an annual release, comes as the government faces a crisis in the country’s north, where ethnic armed groups have captured military and border posts, threatening to block trade with China.
Against this roiling backdrop, the Independence Day celebrations were devoid of the usual pomp and circumstance, and military chief Min Aung Hlaing was notably absent from the proceedings. In a statement, his administration said 9,652 prisoners would be freed.
The military came to power in a coup in February 2001 after ousting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, brutally suppressing protests and cracking down on all forms of dissent.
Suu Kyi, 78, is currently in prison, sentenced to 33 years on an array of politically motivated charges from corruption to flouting COVID-19 restrictions. Her party was dissolved last year after failing to comply with tough new party registration laws.
Since the power grab, military leaders have been accused of murdering dozens of prisoners and covering up their deaths as escape attempts. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group, more than 25,730 people were arrested for opposing the coup, and almost 20,000 are still in detention.
The AAPP reports that at least 4,277 civilians, including pro-democracy activists, have been killed by security forces. In 2022, the generals drew international condemnation after executing four pro-democracy leaders and activists in the country’s first use of the death penalty in decades.
More than 470 prisoners of war return home on both sides after the swap deals stalled in the latter half of 2023.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war in the biggest single release of captives since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that 230 of its prisoners were released while Russia said 248 of its soldiers were returned after mediation by the United Arab Emirates.
While the two sides have gone through several exchanges during the war, swap deals stalled in the latter half of last year. The latest exchange was the first in almost five months.
“More than 200 of our soldiers and civilians have been returned from Russian captivity,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a post on the Telegram messaging app that included a video of uniformed men celebrating.
The prisoner swap on January 3, 2024, was the largest of the Russia-Uraine war [Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Andriy Yermak via Telegram/Handout via Reuters]
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said 230 Ukrainian prisoners, including six civilians, had been released, marking what he said was the 49th exchange between the two sides.
Kyiv said this was the largest documented swap of troops so far.
Some of the Ukrainians had been held since 2022. Among them were some who fought in milestone battles for Ukraine’s Snake Island and port city of Mariupol.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said 248 of its soldiers had been returned after “complex” negotiations by the UAE. Russian officials offered no other details of the exchange.
Attacks on Belgorod
Also on Wednesday, Russia said it shot down 12 missiles fired at one of its southern regions bordering Ukraine.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said the situation “continues to remain tense” after Ukraine launched repeated missile and drone attacks.
While there have been no reports on casualty numbers from the latest attack, Gladkov said authorities were evacuating residents near possibly unexploded munitions with bomb disposal units called in to evaluate the danger.
Defence Ministry technicians were working on disposing of an unexploded projectile, and about 600 residents from 323 houses within a 500-metre (550-yard) radius had been evacuated, he said.
Gladkov added that several other villages also came under fire in Wednesday’s attack and a power line was knocked out.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine fired six Tochka-U ballistic missiles and six guided missiles from a Vilkha heavy multiple rocket launcher.
Ukraine has escalated its attacks on Belgorod over the New Year period after Russia launched some of its most significant attacks on Ukraine since the war began.
On Tuesday, Kyiv said Moscow had launched more than 300 attack drones and missiles of various kinds across Ukraine since Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised that Kyiv’s attacks on Belgorod would “not go unpunished”.
Russian opposition leader says he has seen his lawyer after 20 days travelling to penal colony above the Arctic Circle.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny has confirmed he is being held in a remote Arctic prison and has seen his lawyer after his spokespeople said they had lost touch with him for more than two weeks.
Navalny on Tuesday said he was in good spirits after a “pretty exhausting” 20-day transfer from a prison in the Vladimir region, in a post on X, his account routinely updated via his allies.
“I now live above the Arctic Circle. In the village of Kharp on Yamal. The nearest town has the beautiful name of Labytnangi,” he wrote, after announcing: “I am your new Santa Claus” and noting that he had grown a beard during the “20 days of my transportation”.
His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, on Monday said Navalny had been tracked down and was in the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
The Kremlin critic’s whereabouts had not been known since December 6, triggering concern from his allies, rights groups and Western governments.
“The 20 days of my transportation were pretty exhausting, but I’m still in a good mood,” Navalny said.
“They brought me here on Saturday night. And I was transported with such precaution and on such a strange route (Vladimir – Moscow – Chelyabinsk – Ekaterinburg – Kirov – Vorkuta – Kharp) that I didn’t expect anyone to find me here before mid-January.
“That’s why I was very surprised when the cell door was opened yesterday with the words: ‘A lawyer is here to see you.’”
1/9 I am your new Santa Claus.
Well, I now have a sheepskin coat, an ushanka hat (a fur hat with ear-covering flaps), and soon I will get valenki (a traditional Russian winter footwear). I have grown a beard for the 20 days of my transportation.
Addressing his supporters, Navalny thanked them for being concerned about his wellbeing, adding: “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m totally relieved that I’ve finally made it.”
While his whereabouts were unknown, there was speculation that he was undergoing a prison transfer, which can take weeks in Russia because prisoners are slowly moved by rail between far-flung facilities.
Navalny’s lawyers and supporters had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system.
His new home, known as the “Polar Wolf” colony, is considered one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Its inmates are convicted of grave crimes. Winters are harsh there with temperatures due to drop to about minus 28 degrees Celsius (minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next week.
Navalny has been behind bars since January 2021 when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Before his arrest, he campaigned against corruption and organised major anti-Kremlin protests. He has since received three prison terms and spent months in isolation in Penal Colony Number 6 for alleged minor infractions.
A court extended Navalny’s sentence to 19 years on extremism charges and ruled that he be moved to a more secure, harsher prison.
He has rejected all charges against him as politically motivated.
“Since I’m Santa Claus, you’re probably wondering about the presents,” Navalny said on X. “But I am a special-regime Santa Claus, so only those who have behaved very badly get presents.”
Russian opposition figure has been moved from penal colony and lawyers say they haven’t seen him since last week.
The Kremlin has said it has “no information” about jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, whose lawyers have not seen him since December 6.
Prison authorities moved him from the penal colony where he was serving his sentence for multiple charges including extremism, but have not said where he was transferred to.
Prison officials told a court on Friday that Navalny had left the IK-6 facility in the town of Melekhovo in the Vladimir region, about 230km (140 miles) east of Moscow, according to Vyacheslav Gimadi, the head of the legal department at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
“We don’t know [where he is] for the 10th day,” the lawyer posted on X.
Navalny, who rose to prominence by lampooning President Vladimir Putin’s elite and alleging extensive corruption, was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison on top of the 11 and a half years he was already serving.
His allies had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” high-security facility, the harshest grade in Russia’s prison system, before he was moved.
“Where he was taken is not known,” Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, posted on X, saying he was moved on December 11. “Let me remind you that the lawyers have not seen Alexey since December 6.”
When asked on Friday if the Kremlin had any information about what was happening to Navalny, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “No. I repeat again: we do not have the capacity, or right, or desire, to track the fates of those prisoners who are serving sentences by order of a court.”
Another Navalny ally, Maria Pevchikh, meanwhile, has asked the United Nations Human Rights Committee to help them locate him.
“What is happening with Alexey is, in fact, an enforced disappearance and a flagrant violation of his fundamental rights. Answers must be given,” she said on Thursday.
‘Politically motivated incarceration’
Rights groups have also weighed in. Amnesty International acknowledged “the possibility that he may be in transit to another prison colony”.
But it added that, “as if attempted poisoning, imprisonment and inhumane conditions of detention were not enough, Alexey Navalny may now have been subjected to an enforced disappearance”.
Navalny earned admiration from Russia’s disparate opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated for what Western laboratory tests showed was an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent.
Navalny says he was poisoned in Siberia in August 2020. The Kremlin denied trying to kill him and said there was no evidence he was poisoned.
The Kremlin on Tuesday criticised what it called United States “interference” in Navalny’s case, after the US said it was “deeply concerned” by allies saying they had no access to him.
“We are talking about a prisoner who was found guilty by the law and is serving the prison sentence he received. Any interference, including from the US, is unacceptable,” Peskov said then.
This week, the European Union also called for Navalny’s “immediate and unconditional release from politically motivated incarceration”.
“Russia’s political leadership is responsible for his safety and health in prison for which they will be held to account,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell posted on X.
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