Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov is still in the penal colony in the Russian city of Labytnangi (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District of the Tyumen Region), and he was not transported anywhere, his lawyer Dmitry Dinze has told the Crimea.Realities project.
“I contacted official representatives of the colony. They told me that Sentsov was not transported anywhere and is now in the colony,” Dinze said.
On February 27, Sentsov’s sister, Natalia Kaplan, reported on her Facebook page that her brother was not listed among inmates in the penal colony in Labytnangi, as evidenced by a response from the administration of the penitentiary institution.
“There are reports that Oleh Sentsov is not in IK-8 (penal colony No. 8) in Labytnangi. This is what Yana Goncharova learned from a letter from the colony. They refused to give any information to me in the prison call center. Nobody answers the phone at the colony chief’s office,” Kaplan wrote on her Facebook page.
She said that the letter was sent on February 25, through the Federal Penitentiary Service’s electronic system, the answer came on February 27.
“We begin our search,” Sentsov’s sister stressed.
The letter from the administration of the colony says: “The administration of IK-8 Labytnangi informs you that the letter cannot be delivered because its recipient is not kept in this institution.”
As reported, the North Caucasus Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ruled in August 2015 to sentence Sentsov, who had been detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penitentiary on charges of setting up a terrorist group in Crimea. The Russian Supreme Court later recognized the verdict as legal.
Sentsov is reportedly serving his sentence in high-security correctional facility number eight (also dubbed Polar Bear) is located just outside the Yamalo-Nenets town of Labytnangi. Its inmates are male convicts sentenced for serious and very serious crimes.
