MOSCOW. Aug 9 (Interfax) - Zaur Dadayev, who is incarcerated in an Irkutsk penitentiary for the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015, has been released from a punitive isolation cell and has ended his hunger strike, his lawyer Roza Magomedova told Interfax on Wednesday.
"Yes, he has ended his hunger strike of his own volition. He has already begun taking food. He has been released from punitive confinement," Magomedova said, declining to provide further details.
The lawyer told Interfax on August 1 that Dadayev spent 12 days on hunger strike after being placed in solitary confinement due to what Magomedova described as trumped-up violations of the penal colony's internal rules.
According to Magomedova, Dadayev was placed in solitary confinement in mid-July for standing near a bathhouse with other inmates and waiting for an inmate who went to see whether there were free spaces in the bathhouse.
Dadayev joined other inmates who had announced a hunger strike earlier, citing similar reasons, the lawyer said.
The same day, the Federal Penitentiary Service's branch for the Irkutsk region denied reports about Dadayev's hunger strike.
Nemtsov was killed on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge on February 27, 2015.
On June 29, 2017, the jury of the Moscow District Military Court found Dadayev guilty of killing Nemtsov. Dadayev was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Other defendants found guilty by the jury of acting as accomplices received prison terms ranging from 11 to 19 years.
All of the convicts are now serving their sentences in different penitentiaries. Dadayev has been sent to a high-security penal colony for former officers of law enforcement agencies in Irkutsk.