MOSCOW, July 5, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza has

been transferred to a prison hospital and his lawyers have been denied access
to him for two days, his wife said on Friday, raising concerns for the
dissident's fate.

Kara-Murza, 42, is serving a 25-year prison sentence on treason and other
charges, one of the harshest punishments Moscow has meted out to opponents of
Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Twice poisoned in what he alleges were assassination attempts by the Russian
security services, concern has grown for his health since the death of
opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison colony in February.

"Vladimir Kara-Murza was transferred to a prison hospital. His lawyers
weren't allowed access to him," Evgenia Kara-Murza said in a social media
post.

She said her husband had been transferred from the IK-6 high-security prison
colony in the Siberian region of Omsk where he is serving his sentence to a
regional prison hospital.

"His lawyers, who had travelled to IK-6 from Moscow and had been waiting from
8:30 in the morning on Thursday, were informed about this in the afternoon
after more than five hours of waiting," she said.

After travelling to the hospital, they were first told Kara-Murza was not
there, and then after visiting hours closed the facility confirmed to them he
had been admitted.

Staff there continued to deny access to his lawyers on Friday, saying he had
not been fully processed and was then being seen by doctors, Evgenia Kara-
Murza said.

"Thus, the lawyers were not able to see Vladimir and make sure that he was
alright," she said.

They may not be able to try again until after the weekend, she added.

The Kremlin critic, who is a dual Russian-UK citizen, suffers from nerve
disease after he fell severely ill in 2015 and 2017 in what he says were
poisonings orchestrated by Russia's FSB security service.

He was imprisoned in April 2023 after criticising Russia's military offensive
on Ukraine and pressing Western countries to impose sanctions against the
Kremlin.