Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is no longer in his penal colony one of his close aides said, adding that he has been moved to an undisclosed location.

According to Kira Yarmysh, Navalny was not there when a lawyer visited him at the IK-2 colony located around 60 miles east of Moscow, in the Vladimir region.

The lawyer was told “there is no such convict,” tweeted Yarmysh, who added: “We don’t know where Aleksey is now and to what colony he is being taken.”

“Of course, neither Alexei’s attorneys nor his relatives were informed about his transfer in advance”, Yarmysh said. There were rumors that he would be transferred to the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, “but it is impossible to know when (and if) he will actually arrive there,” Yarmysh added.

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“The problem with his transfer to another colony is not only that the high-security colony is much scarier,” she wrote.

“As long as we don’t know where Alexei is, he remains one-on-one with the system that has already tried to kill him, so our main task now is to locate him as soon as possible.”

Last month, Navalny shared his concerns about being moved to the Melekhovo prison, which is notorious for the torture of its inmates.

“My new sentence has not yet entered into force, but I’ve heard rumors that I’ll be transferred to the high-security colony in Melekhovo, where convicts get their fingernails pulled out,” he tweeted on May 4.

Russia’s highest-profile opposition leader was jailed in February 2021 for two and a half years for parole violations. He had just returned from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning by the Novichok nerve agent blamed on the Kremlin. However, Kremlin has denied the allegations.

On March 24, Navalny received another nine years in prison for fraud and contempt of court on charges. However, Navalny says that the charges are politically motivated.

Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation (FBK) has been largely dismantled after the authorities labeled it an “extremist” organization. 

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Navalny slammed the war against Ukraine in a court appearance, where he called the invasion “built entirely on lies.”

Navalny ally Ivan Zhdanov told Reuters this month that the former will remain in prison as long as Putin is in power.