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Nobel laureate Oleg Orlov is being subjected to cruel and degrading treatment by Russian prison authorities and his health is deteriorating, Russian human rights group Memorial said on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Orlov, a leader of “Memorial” and one of the laureates of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, was sentenced by a Moscow court last month to two and a half years in prison for “discrediting the armed forces” of Russia.

He was put on trial by prosecutors after he participated in demonstrations against the war in Ukraine and published an article in which he wrote that Russia had become a fascist country.

His lawyers have since filed an appeal against the first instance decision.

The Memorial Group said on Wednesday that Orlov’s health was deteriorating due to a strict diet of “dry rations” to which boiled water was added.

He is also forced, at the orders of the case judge, to travel daily between the detention center and the court in order to consult the documents necessary for his appeal. Memorial states that he is transported in an unheated police van with exhaust fumes.

Orlov’s lawyers charge that they do not have regular access to him and that meetings are surveilled, violating the confidential nature of client-lawyer relationships.

The Nobel laureate’s legal team fears for his life

“Orlov’s constant trips to court, as well as the conditions of transportation and detention during the trips, taken together, constitute cruel and degrading treatment and violate Orlov’s rights,” his legal team noted in an official complaint filed with the court and published on the Memorial website.

“The current situation causes me serious fears for the health and life of my client,” states one of Orlov’s lawyers, quoted in the complaint.

The Memorial, founded in 1989, has documented human rights abuses from the time of Stalin’s dictatorship to the present day and defended freedom of expression, focusing on identifying and honoring individual victims.

Orlov, 70, has been one of the leaders of the human rights group for two decades. Russia’s Supreme Court dissolved the Memorial organization on December 28, 2021, outlawing it at the end of a year marked by repression against dissent and civic organizations in the country.

Memorial representatives said earlier in March that despite his age, Orlov was asked in detention to sign a document saying he was willing to fight in Ukraine.

According to the Memorial, Orlov laughed at this request and wrote on the document that “I do not agree.”

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