POKROV, Russia ¨C He looked gaunt and weak, his skin stretched tightly over his skull. Video of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny that emerged in late April has focused attention on a Russian prison system that, former inmates say, is designed to break convicts, not reform them, and where medical neglect is rife.
Navalny had just ended a 24-day hunger strike when he appeared by video link at a Moscow court hearing, his latest skirmish with Russian prosecutors. His refusal to eat was in protest at the prison authority¡¯s refusal to allow an outside specialist to treat him for back pain.
Navalny¡¯s ordeal is nothing out of the ordinary, say seven people familiar with the IK-2 Male Correctional Colony east of Moscow, where in March he began a two-and-a-half-year sentence for parole breaches. If anything, these people say, Navalny¡¯s political celebrity may be protection from the violence that many other convicts endure.
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