Jailed Russian journalist can no longer speak after assaults by prison staff

Olga Komleva, a jailed journalist and activist from the city of Ufa in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, has lost the ability to speak since finding herself in custody, she told her husband in a letter from prison, a copy of which appeared on Komleva’s Telegram support group on Monday.

Komleva said she had lost her voice on 8 September and it was yet to return, adding that she had experienced similar problems before, though it had never previously lasted longer than for seven hours.

Komleva also appears to have alluded to sexual assault while in detention, writing: “One more touch here, at the detention centre … to add to all those others from Ufa, and since that day, I haven’t been able to speak.”

In March, Komleva’s husband said that employees at the pretrial detention centre in Ufa, where she had previously been held, had sexually assaulted his wife. The harassment stopped after media attention and a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office, according to Novaya Gazeta.

Komleva volunteered at slain opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s Ufa office for several years, and later went on to work for independent news outlet RusNews, with a focus on protests in Bashkortostan, a Muslim-majority republic in the Volga region.

In July, Komleva was sentenced to 12 years in prison for spreading “false information” about the military and involvement with an “extremist” community, namely Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. Some details of the case are unknown as the trial was held behind closed doors.

Komleva’s supporters have expressed concern over whether she will be able to communicate during an appeal hearing scheduled for 28 October. Lilia Chanysheva, a former coordinator of Navalny’s Ufa office and herself a political prisoner who was released during the largest ever prisoner exchange between Russia and the West in August 2024, explained that Komleva now had to communicate with her husband in writing when he visited in person.