Moscow: Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has alleged that the jail authorities where he is jailed are withholding the Quran which he intended to study while serving his sentence. In an Instagram post, Navalny has threatened to sue the prison in this regard.
“The thing is they’re not giving my Quran.” He said in an Instagram post announcing his first lawsuit against the prison officials.
In the post, Navalny added that deeply studying the Quran was one of the several self-improvement goals he had set for himself while in prison.
The claim comes as Navalny, a Christian, remains on a hunger strike in protest against an alleged refusal by authorities to allow his physician to examine him behind bars after he developed severe back and leg pain.
He came under fire early in his political career for making nationalistic comments and deriding immigrants in Russia from predominantly Muslim countries in Central Asia.
The Kremlin critic said he has not been given access to any of the books he brought or ordered over the past month because they all need to be “inspected for extremism”, which officials say takes three months.
“Books are our everything, and if I have to sue for my right to read, then I’ll be suing,” he said.
A court-ordered Navalny in February to serve two and a half years in prison for violating the terms of his probation, including when he was convalescing in Germany, from a 2014 embezzlement conviction.
