The whereabouts of former RFE/RL contributor Nika Novak seem to have been re-established after her lawyer stated final week that she disappeared from a Siberian correctional colony the place she was held.
According to a social media put up tied to Novak’s family and friends, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service despatched a letter to her lawyer Yulia Kuznetsova saying that she remains to be at Penal Colony No. 11 in Russia’s Irkutsk area the place she was transferred to on March 1.
Kuznetsova has not confirmed this on her public social media accounts and she or he was not instantly accessible to reply RFE/RL’s request for remark.
Alarm over the place the 33-year-old Novak was being held got here on November 30 when Kuznetsova stated she referred to as the colony for info on her location however was rejected and informed to submit a request, which she subsequently did.
Kuznetsova then stated in a social media put up that it appeared Novak was being transferred from Penal Colony No. 11, although her vacation spot was unknown.
But in accordance with the declare from the account linked to Novak’s shut acquaintances, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service has confirmed that she stays in the identical penal colony, though RFE/RL has not been capable of independently confirm this info.
Novak was handed a four-year sentence after a closed-door trial for “confidential cooperation with a overseas state, worldwide or overseas group” — a sentence she and rights organizations contemplate unjust.
She was transferred to the Siberian correctional colony in March, the place she complained about torture-like situations earlier than happening a starvation strike.
Novak stated she was positioned in solitary confinement there for refusing to present media interviews about how “the whole lot is okay within the colony and the prisoners are glad” and for refusing to work as a seamstress.
Before her arrest, Novak had labored for ChitaMedia and was editor in chief of the Zab.ru web site. She contributed to packages by RFE/RL’s Siberia.Realities in 2022.
Her case marked the primary time {that a} journalist was sentenced underneath Article 275.1 of Russia’s felony code, a criminal offense that was solely launched in 2022 within the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Rights specialists have criticized the conception and wording of the legislation, whereas Human Rights Watch referred to as the laws “harking back to the Soviet-era ban on contacts with foreigners” in its 2023 World Report.
On July 22, 2024, main Russian human rights group Memorial acknowledged Novak as a political prisoner.
Her detention has additionally been condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Coalition for Women in Journalism, and the International Press Institute, which stated Nika’s sentencing was “made attainable by Russia’s continued instrumentalization of its personal laws with the intention of repressing impartial journalists and different important voices.”
