Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Russia.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Russia. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** Inmate's Gruesome
Account Of Torture Adds To Evidence Of Rampant Abuse In Russian Prisons Idel.Realities, Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL, 28 December 2021 www.rferl.org/a/russia-prison-torture-rampant/31630081.html?ltflags=mailer [accessed 28
December 2021] The claims by Marsel Amirov, who is serving a
14-year sentence on a murder conviction, were the latest in a series of
revelations and allegations pointing to widespread abuse of inmates in
Russia's sprawling prison system. He told one member
that he had been tortured: He said that his head was pushed repeatedly into a
bucket of human excrement and that he had been beaten, strangled, and raped
with a mop handle, according to a written statement he provided later to his
lawyer. But little has been
done in the way of reform, and prison guards and officials are rarely
punished or prosecuted. At his annual press conference last week, President
Vladimir Putin said prison torture is a “world problem” and suggested without
evidence that it is no worse in Russia than in the United States or France. 'I Was Always
Afraid Of Getting Caught': Former Inmate Who Leaked Russian Prison-Torture
Videos Speaks Out Sergei Khazov-Cassia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL, 22
October 2021 www.rferl.org/a/russia-prison-torture-videos/31524890.html?ltflags=mailer [accessed 23 October
2021] А former
Russian inmate who leaked a massive cache of videos showing evidence of
rampant torture in Russian prisons said he believes prison guards were prone
to using sexual assault against their victims “because it is the cruelest.” The videos, secretly obtained by Syarhey
Savelyeu and then leaked to and published by a
Russian rights group, have shone a brutal spotlight on the widespread problem
of torture in Russian jails and prisons, which has been largely ignored by
authorities. Speaking to RFE/RL
from France, where he is seeking political asylum, Savelyeu,
a 31-year-old native of Belarus, said that he himself was abused by security
agents in custody, though not while he was serving his sentence in a facility
in the central Saratov region. In one of several
videos that have made public, a male prisoner can be seen screaming while
being raped with a broomstick. Other clips showed prisoners urinating on
other inmates, as well as graphic images of rape. 'People Would
Scream For Hours': Former Inmates Shed Light On Recent Russian Torture
Revelations Sania Yusupova
& Robert Coalson, Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty RFE/RL, 17 October 2021 www.rferl.org/a/russia-prison-torture-videos-testimony/31515035.html [accessed 18 October
2021] Earlier this month,
the nongovernmental Gulagu.net -- which tracks human rights abuses by Russian
police and in Russian prisons -- disclosed the existence of more than 40
gigabytes of video material graphically documenting beatings, rape, and
torture of inmates in prisons and pretrial detention centers. "At the
request of prosecutors, detainees who refused to 'cooperate' with
investigators were sent to us," Golikov said
in his video statement. “We were forced to 'work' with them so they would
give the 'necessary' testimony that investigators wanted. "After the
rapes, the prisoners were forced to sign false confessions,
self-incriminations, and also to 'cooperate' further with investigators --
that is, to give false testimony not only against themselves but against
other prisoners, too. They were blackmailed by the fact that their abuse was
recorded, and they threatened to release that material." European Court
Orders Russia To Pay Almost $2.4 Million To Relatives Of People Missing In
Chechnya RFE/RL's Russian
Service, RadioFreeEurope-Radio Liberty, 22 June
2021 [accessed 22 June
2021] The ECHR ruled on
June 22 that Russia violated several articles of the European Convention on
Human Rights, including the right to life, when, according to witnesses, the
military unit in question killed an elderly man in the town of Borozdinovskaya in Chechnya in October 2005 and abducted
11 local residents, mainly ethnic Avars, whose
whereabouts have been unknown since then. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Russia U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/russia/
[accessed 5 August
2021] DISAPPEARANCE There were reports
of disappearances perpetrated by or on behalf of government authorities.
Enforced disappearances for both political and financial reasons continued in
the North Caucasus. According to the August report of the UN Working Group on
Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, there were 867 outstanding cases of
enforced or involuntary disappearances in the country On October 20, the
human rights group Memorial reported that five men were abducted from the village
of Chechen-Aul on August 28, and two more were
abducted on August 30. Memorial stated that all seven men were taken to the
city of Argun, where they were visited by the
Chechen interior minister Ruslan Alkhanov and Chechen deputy prime minister Abuzaid Vismuradov before being
transferred to a secret prison, where they were interrogated and tortured.
Four of the men were later released (two on September 18 and two on October
7), while three reportedly remained in government detention facilities as of
December. Memorial reported that 13 men were abducted on November 5 from the
Chechen city of Gudermes and taken to a secret
prison, where Memorial believed they remained as of December. There were reports
Russian-led forces and Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine engaged in
enforced disappearances (see Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for
Ukraine). TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Physical abuse of
suspects by police officers was reportedly systemic and usually occurred
within the first few days of arrest in pretrial detention facilities. Reports
from human rights groups and former police officers indicated that police
most often used electric shocks, suffocation, and stretching or applying
pressure to joints and ligaments because those methods were considered less
likely to leave visible marks. The problem was especially acute in the North
Caucasus. According to the Civic Assistance Committee, prisoners in the North
Caucasus complained of mistreatment, unreasonable punishment, religious and
ethnic harassment, and inadequate provision of medical care. There were reports
of rape and sexual abuse by government agents. For example, media reported on
Mukhtar Aliyev’s account of his five years in IK-7
prison in Omsk region from 2015 until his release during the year, where he
was subjected to torture, including sexual assault. Aliyev
told media that prison officials would beat him, tie him to the bars for a
prolonged length of time causing his legs and arms to swell up, and force
other inmates to assault him sexually while recording their actions. Aliyev said that the officials threatened to leak the
recording to other inmates and officials if he did not behave. Council of Europe
anti-torture Committee publishes report on the Russian Federation Executive Summary,
24 September 2019 [accessed 1 June
2020] At Kazan Federal
Hospital, the delegation noted with grave concern that electroconvulsive therapy(ECT) was
being administered to
patients on some
wards in unmodified
form, i.e. without an anaesthetic and muscle relaxants. In the CPT’s view, the
administration of ECT in unmodified form can raise issues under Article 3 of
the European Convention on Human Rights. Regarding means of
restraint, the mechanical restraint of patients using canvas straps was
practiced in all hospitals visited.
However, to differing degrees, international guidelines regarding
such measures were not being followed in any of the four
establishments. It was particularly concerning to note
that at Kazan
Federal Hospital patients
could be subjected
to four-point fixation
alone in isolation rooms for
many days without any release; various patients who had been subjected to
such lengthy measures told
the CPT delegation
that they had
refused to be
fed as they
found it too challenging to defecate into a bedpan
while being fixed horizontally. Patients explained that after a few days
of not being
able to defecate,
their abdomens would
swell and become
very painful. Furthermore, one
younger male patient who told the delegation he had recently been restrained
for a week was found to have a number of bed sores on his sacral area. Seclusion was used
in the two federal hospitals visited by the CPT. On the intensive care wards
of both hospitals, patients
were sometimes spending
months or even
years alone in
very small bare rooms as narrow as 1.1 m, with almost
no daylight and artificial lighting switched on for 24 hours a day. At Kazan
Federal Hospital, patients in seclusion had no access to a toilet (having
instead to use a bucket placed
in the corner
of the room);
at Volgograd Federal
Hospital, there was a
small unscreened floor-level toilet in the corner of the room near the
barred gate door. In addition to having no or almost no access to outdoor
exercise and to being prevented from any physical exercise inside the rooms,
some patients in both hospitals were not even given a toothbrush or a spoon
(obliging them to eat with their hands) for months or even years. In the
CPT’s view, such conditions do not befit a health-care institution and amount
to inhuman and degrading treatment. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 15 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Use of excessive
force by police is widespread, and rights groups have reported that law
enforcement agents who carry out such abuses have deliberately employed
electric shocks, suffocation, and the stretching of a detainee’s body so as
to avoid leaving visible injuries. Prisons are overcrowded and unsanitary;
inmates lack access to health care and are subject to abuse by guards. In
August 2018, Novaya Gazeta posted videos of
guards engaging in organized beatings of prisoners in Yaroslavl. The
authorities arrested at least 12 guards at the prison after a public outcry,
but the NGO Public Verdict reported systematic abuse at another prison in the
region in December. In July 2019, Public Verdict released another video
showing continued abuse at Yaroslavl. Abductions,
Torture, 'Hybrid Deportation': Crimean Tatar Activist Describes Six Years
Under Russian Rule Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL, 17 March 2020 [accessed 7 April
2020] But the first blow
aimed specifically at the Crimean Tatars came on March 3, when Reshat Ametov held a one-person
protest. Later he was found mutilated. A person who did nothing but express
his opinion was found dead, brutally murdered. Of course, that frightened
everyone and they understood that this would not be over in a day, a week, or
a month. We began to see that cases of abduction and torture were not
exceptions. We saw people disappear without a trace. For instance, [Chairman
of the World Congress of Crimean Tatars] Ervin Ibrahimov.
Or the son and nephew of human rights activist Abdureshit
Dzhepparov. Crimea was transformed into a gray zone
because almost no independent journalists remained. Disturbing New
Stories Emerge of LGBTQ+ Torture in Chechnya Mathew Rodriguez,
Out Magazine, 8 May 2019 www.out.com/news/2019/5/08/disturbing-new-stories-emerge-lgbtq-torture-chechnya [accessed 8 May
2019] Four gay men have
stepped forward to talk about a new round of detentions and beatings of gay
and bisexual men, according to the Human Rights Watch. The detentions and
assaults happened between December 2018 and February 2019. According to the
men, Chechen police kicked them with their boots, beat them with sticks and
pipes, and tortured three of them with electric shocks. One man said he was
raped with a stick. The men said that
police demanded they name other gay friends of theirs and withheld their cell
phones for that purpose. One man indicated that officials outed
him to his family and told them to kill him. In three of the four cases,
police asked for money in exchange for the gay man’s release. All four said
that officials starved them and gave them only limited amounts of water. Unlawful arrest and
torture ‘standard practice’ in Chechnya Isabel Gorst, Irish times, Moscow, 21 December 2018 www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/unlawful-arrest-and-torture-standard-practice-in-chechnya-1.3739716 [accessed 23
December 2018] A fact-finding
report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation
in Europe said arbitrary and unlawful arrest and detention, harassment and
torture as well as enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions had
increasingly become “standard practice” for Chechen law enforcement and
security agencies. Russian prison
torture victim 'brought back to life four times' Diana Magnay, Moscow
correspondent, Sky News, 9 December 2018 uk.news.yahoo.com/russian-prison-torture-victim-brought-back-life-four-165900172.html [accessed 9 December
2018] Thirteen of the
guards now sit behind bars awaiting trial. Another is under house arrest. Mr Makarov points out their windows. "I hope, I deeply
hope that these sadists are punished," he says. Mr Makarov's lawyer,
Irina Biryukova, from the human rights group Public
Verdict, had been busy long before the video came out. She had complained
to prison authorities that Mr Makarov and others
were being beaten. She had brought their case to the European Court of Human
Rights which had ordered authorities to look into it. The video was
leaked one year later. Only then was there a response. It's thrown the
spotlight on a culture of torture and abuse in Russia's jails. Ms Biryukova says the publicity
from the video has emboldened others to speak out. Gay man refused
justice after torture in Chechnya concentration camp Joe Morgan, Gay Star
News, 27 November 2018 www.gaystarnews.com/article/gay-man-refused-justice-after-torture-in-chechnya-concentration-camp [accessed 23
December 2018] LIFE IN A CHECHNYA
CONCENTRATION CAMP
-- Police interrogated and tortured him to name other gay men, he says. ‘They burst in
every 10 or 15 minutes shouting that I was gay and they would kill me,’ he
also said. ‘Then they beat me
with a stick for a long time: in the legs, ribs, buttocks, and back. When I
started to fall, they pulled me up and carried on. ‘Every day they
assured me they would kill me, and told me how.’ Lapunov hoped the
government, and police, would investigate. He said it must happen ‘because we
are all people and all have rights’. He is the only
person who suffered in the concentration camps that has dared to speak
publicly about his experience. Ministry
of Internal Affairs apologizes to residents of Orenburg for tortures in
department 10 years later Crime Russia, 18
September 2018 en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/ministry-of-internal-affairs-apologizes-to-residents-of-orenburg-for-tortures-in-department-10-years/ [accessed 21
September 2018] On August 25, 2008,
Vyacheslav Sadovsky,
Maxim Nimatov and Anton Ferapontov
were taken to the Dzerzhinsky Regional MIA Department in Orenburg. They said
that for a day they were severely tortured in order to obtain confessions in
several cases. As the detainees
told, the pol were put on gas masks and put smoke
from cigarettes into the breathing hose. In addition, they were strangled and
beaten with clubs. According to the
detainees, the policemen would put gas masks on them and blow cigarette smoke
into the breathing hose. Apart from that, they were strangled and beaten with
batons. New
Videos Reveal More Evidence Of Torture At Russian Prison Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL, 24 August 2018 www.rferl.org/a/videos-reveal-more-evidence-of-torture-at-russian-prison/29450927.html [accessed 25 August
2018] The guards are seen
standing in rows on both sides of a corridor talking about the necessity to
"punish" prisoners. Several inmates are then forced to run between them
while the guards kick them and beat them with their fists and batons. A group of inmates
is then forced to return and run the gauntlet again. Among the people beating
them is a man wearing a blue T-shirt and gloves instead of a prison guard's
uniform. His face is briefly shown. A voice can be
heard addressing the man as "Sardor," and
saying: "Be tougher with these ones. Switch off the recording, OK?
Switch off the recording." A
torture scandal makes Russia pay attention Tanya Lokshina, Open Democracy - oD
Russia, 16 August 2018 www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/tanya-lokshina/torture-scandal-makes-russia-pay-attention [accessed 16 August
2018] But Makarov’s case
isn’t unique by far. To illustrate that torture is widespread in Russia, Meduza, a leading online media outlet, pulled together
data on more than 50 other torture cases reported in the public domain in
2018. The alleged torturers include police officials, investigators, security
agents, and penitentiary officials. The alleged methods of torture include
beating, asphyxiation, electric shocks, restraining in painful positions,
sleep deprivation, denial of water and so on. Only a few criminal cases were
opened into these incidents, and only one of them has been moved to trial. Ex-prisoners
speak out over torture after leaked video South China Morning
Post, 3 August, 2018 [accessed 5 August
2018] Zarechnev spoke about the
eight years of hell that he endured in a prison colony, during which he was
subjected to daily beatings and witnessed gang rape, after being found guilty
of violent robbery as a 22-year-old in 2010. Freed just a month
ago, the former DJ served his sentence in the IK-14 colony near Nizhny
Novgorod, 400km east of Moscow, dubbed “the camp of torture” by local NGOs. “As a new arrival,
I was beaten every day by the ‘activists’,” Zarechnev
said, referring to prisoners who collaborate with the camp’s administration. “There is a
political will inside the prison system to get rid of the Gulag, but it will
be difficult to convince their 400,000 employees working in remote forests”
to change their practices, he said. A
sense of impunity still reigns at the heart of the Russian prison system, as
seen in the reactions to the video. Shocking
Video Prompts Mass Torture Crackdown in Russian Prisons Vasily Kuzmichyonok,
TASS, 24 July 2018 themoscowtimes.com/news/shocking-video-prompts-mass-torture-crackdown-russian-prisons-62334 [accessed 24 July
2018] Russia’s prison
watchdog has announced plans to launch a nationwide inspection of
correctional facilities following public outrage over a leaked video of a
prisoner being tortured. Public officials in
Yaroslavl have come under fire for failing to investigate a torture case
dating back to 2017 before footage of the incident was published in the media
last week. Seventeen prison guards have since been fired and six arrested on
charges of abuse of power. In a separate case on Tuesday, investigators in
the western city of Bryansk said they had detained a guard on suspicion of
torturing an inmate to death. The Federal
Penitentiary Service (FSIN) said Tuesday that it will set up inquiry boards
in all of its regional branches to investigate the use of physical force by
employees in the past year. Crimea.
Territory of torture Iryna Shevchenko,
Reuters, 14 June 2018 www.unian.info/society/10152938-crimea-territory-of-torture.html [accessed 17 June
2018] After that,
together with his father and two brothers, he was taken to an unknown
location, bags over their heads. There the family was divided: his brothers
and father were left in one room, while Ibrahimjon
was taken to another. He was tied to a chair, his legs and hands tied up with
scotch tape, and then he was once again brutally beaten. The first blows were
to his chest and head, and then beating continued for several hours. Along
with physical abuse, he was bombarded with questions like where do you go,
who are your contacts, whom do you know… Moreover, they tried to establish
his alleged links with the "Islamic State" and the war in ...
Syria. "They asked me when I went to Syria and fought for ISIS? I told them that I did not go anywhere, that I never
left Crimea. But they told me I was lying," says the victim. FSB operatives did
not stop at the beating. The man was further intimidated and blackmailed.
They told him they would rape his wife and send his children to an orphanage.
They put a bag on his heads and strangled him, demanding to confess to
extremism. They dragged them across the floor and tazed
him six or seven times... "They took off my jeans and underwear, put me
on the floor, tied my hands around my feet. They
stuck something into me from behind and connected something, stuffed a rag
into my mouth. They turned on some kind of machine and I was hit with
electricity, I felt like I was burning inside... " the
man tells us without looking up. Torture lasted for hours. After all the
abuse, one of the kidnappers told Mirpochchaev he
should be grateful to his brother for stopping the torture. Ibrahimjon was photographed, fingerprinted, and then
moved to another room with a bag on his head. Then he found himself out in
the street, where next to him he heard voices of his brothers and father.
Then Mirpochchaev heard his second brother crying
out: "They'll let you go, but they'll take me with them." And so it
happened. Ingushetia
police officers facing torture charges plead not guilty Crime Russia, 19 May
2018 en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/ingushetia-police-officers-facing-torture-charges-plead-not-guilty/ [accessed 23 May
2018] The defendants have
been torturing arrestees since at least 2010, according to investigators. The
earlier such case documented in the case file dates back to this year.
Arrestee Magomed Doliev
died of torture in the Ingush ‘E’ Center in the summer of 2016. Doliev was suspected of having robbed a Rosselkhozbank outlet. The same defendants tortured Doliev’s wife Marem. They would
put her head in a plastic bag, tie it with something, and punch her in the
face. However, Khamkhoev and his subordinates were
arrested only in December 2016. Russia’s
Antifa Is Being Tortured and Detained by Putin’s
Shadowy Security Service, Sources Say Cristina Maza, Newsweek, 6 April 2018 www.newsweek.com/russias-antifa-being-tortured-and-detained-putins-shadowy-security-service-874087 [accessed 15 April
2018] During the
following three-and-a-half hours, Kapustin claims the men tortured him with
an electrical cattle prod while questioning him about an acquaintance from
work. “I was thrown into
the minibus, put on the floor and handcuffed with my arms behind my back,”
Kapustin described to Newsweek from the safety of neighboring Finland, where
he is now living. “Then the car started, and the entire time the car was
moving I was tortured with an electric shocker. They demanded answers to
their questions while one of them stood on my feet, pressing them to the
floor, and a second man used the electrical shocker on my abdomen, hips and
groin.” After torturing
him, Kapustin claims his captors brought him to the FSB’s office for
questioning and then later to his house, which the police searched. He didn’t
see the faces of the men who tortured him, but he said the men who beat him
and electrocuted him in the van were the same people who questioned him at
the police station. In the FSB's office, the officers threatened to break his
legs and kill him. But he was released soon after without being charged. Kapustin says he
was tortured because of his friendship with young, anti-fascist anarchists in
Russia, and because of his own history of activism. Anapa
police dept investigators refused to initiate case
about tortures Crime Russia, 07
November 2017 en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/investigators-refused-to-initiate-case-about-tortures-in-anapa-police-dept-11-times/ [accessed 9 November
2017] Artem was detained in
December 2015 on suspicion of a robbery attack on a sales representative, who
supplied tobacco products to a self-employed individual Arustamyan. “[After putting a
gas mask, they began to] inflict blows all over my body, saying that I should
repent, and then they will stop beating me. But I had nothing to repent of,
since I did not commit the alleged crime. Then one of the police officer took
some metal object and began to strike multiple blows to my feet. At the same
time, there was loud music playing in the office. I can’t recall what it was, I think it was radio playing. There was a persistent
smell of alcohol; I sensed it when they removed the bag off of my head. They
said “the sooner you tell the truth, the sooner it will stop.” I said I
didn’t know anything, so they began to beat me with their feet, jump on my
back with their knees, and beat my feet with a stick. When it dawned on them
that I wouldn’t say anything, they said “now it’s time for the lie detector.”
At first, I was relieved, but then I realized it was not what I thought,” Ponomarchuk said. Instead of the lie
detector, they began to electrocute the detainee. The terminals were attached
to the whole body, causing a terrible pain. But this was not enough for the
policemen. After the electric shock torture, law enforcers wrapped a rubber
baton with scotch tape, smeared with gel, and inserted him into the anus. The
pain was so strong that the young man lost consciousness. When he woke up, he
had no other choice but to confess to the crime and sign all the necessary
documents. At the suggestion of the operatives, he signed a protocol on
administrative violation — allegedly, the man had
been walking along the street and refused to show documents to police
officers who stopped him (Disobedience to the lawful order of an employee,
Art. 19.3 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offences). After that, he was
transferred to a cell for administratively detained persons. Nizhnekamsk:
3 policemen detained after young man killed himself due to torture Crime Russia, 02
November 2017 https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/nizhnekamsk-3-policemen-detained-after-young-man-killed-himself-due-to-torture/ [accessed 3 November
2017] The police officers
are accused of the torture of 22-year-old Nizhnekamsk
resident Ilnaz Pirkin,
after which he threw himself off the roof of a high-rise building on the
city’s outskirts. Before his death,
the young man called his girlfriend and parents, asking them to find his
phone. Pirkin used it to record his suicide message,
in which he said that the police forced him to confess to a series of car
batteries thefts. According to him, on the night of October 19, the police
officers apprehended him outside of his parents' house, took him to the
woods, and beat him. After this, the young man was taken to the police
department, where he was tortured; the officers used the ‘elephant’ method,
when a gas mask is put on the victim, blocking the air. On the video, Pirkin says that he wants to “achieve justice” with his
action and prevent anything like this from happening in the future: How
to hide evidence of torture inside Russia’s prison system Anastasia Zotova, openDemocracy, 17
October 2017 www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/anastasia-zotova/stop-torture-in-russian-prisons [accessed 26 October
2017] One recent example
of this took place in the Bryansk region. In July 2017, we received a
collective letter from several dozen inmates of Colony IK-1, stating that
they had been subjected to physical abuse by prison staff. Some of them, we
were told, were forced to do the splits, and had paper bags put on their
heads and their mouths taped up. All this is, not surprisingly, illegal. Here’s
an excerpt from one of the prisoners’ letters: “They made us stand with our faces to the
wall and started hitting us on our bodies and legs. They formed two lines and
ordered us to run between them to the toilet block, with our arms behind our
backs and our heads bent. Then they beat us as we ran. When we got to the
toilets, they shaved us — our heads, our beards. I’m bald, so they shaved off
my eyebrows. After the shaving, we had to run back. Then they brought a
bucket of water in and made us wash the floor with our clothes, and after
that the stood us against the wall and started beating us on the legs again.” We immediately
attempted to send lawyers into this prison, but none of them were allowed
near the prisoners for more than two weeks. (This is absolutely against
Russian law.) And when they were eventually let in, many of the complainants
refused to testify about the torture. Only six men (out of more than 50
initial complainants) made statements about the illegal physical abuse they
had suffered. Gay
Russian speaks out on police torture in Chechnya Olga Rotenberg, Agence France-Presse AFP, 16
October 2017 www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/gay-russian-speaks-out-on-police-torture-in-chechnya/ar-AAtA5Kr [accessed 26 October
2017] www.yahoo.com/news/gay-russian-speaks-police-torture-chechnya-171320033.html [accessed 13 January
2019] Lapunov described being
thrown into a cell drenched in blood. "The cell was
around two by two metres and about a quarter of the
floor was just covered in blood -- it was quite fresh blood," he
said. He believed he would be
killed. "Based on their words
and their actions, I thought that after a certain time they would kill me in
any case." Hours after his
detention, police began beating him.
"They started beating me with sticks. I don't know how long it
took but a very long time," he said.
"They hit me on the calves, they put my
face to a wall and beat me on the legs, thighs, buttocks and back, until I
started to fall." Lapunov gave a news
conference at Novaya Gazeta, an opposition
newspaper which first reported that Chechen authorities were imprisoning and
torturing gay men. “They
Have Long Arms and They Can Find Me” -- Anti-Gay Purge by Local Authorities
in Russia’s Chechen Republic Nataliya Vasilyeva,
Human Rights Watch, 26 May 2017 [accessed 4 November
2017] In February 2017,
Chechnya’s law enforcement and security officials launched an anti-gay purge.
They rounded up dozens of men on suspicion of being gay, held them in
unofficial detention facilities for days, humiliated, starved, and tortured
them. They forcibly disappeared some of the men. Others were returned to
their families barely alive from beatings. Their captors exposed them to
their families as gay and encouraged their relatives to carry out honor
killings. Although Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov has denied the round-ups, the information
presented in this report shows that top-level local authorities in Chechnya
sanctioned them. Russia’s federal government has pledged to investigate, but
intense and well-founded fear of official retaliation and honor killings, and overwhelming stigma will prevent many
victims from coming forward. This report
documents the violent purge and the local and federal government’s response.
It is based on interviews with men who had been rounded up, as well as with
journalists who documented the round-ups and with representatives of a
Russian LGBT organization who have helped these men and documented their
ordeals. "It
will never get back to normal." Stories of three torture victims in
Russia International
Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (irct),
28 Nov 2016 irct.org/media-and-resources/latest-news/article/626 [accessed 13 January
2019] “They made me sit
on a chair with a high back and handcuffed me so my hands were behind the
back of the chair. They then took a baseball bat and started to hit me on the
parts of my body, which were covered by clothes. They beat me up and put a
plastic bag over my head to choke me. Mikhaylenko
[a police officer] made sure to hold on to the handcuffs so I didn't fall
from the beating,” says Oleg. As a result of the
beating, Oleg ended up with a hematoma on his head, leading to swelling and
bruising. “They were doing everything
to make me confess. When they removed the plastic bag from my head, Makarov
[another police officer] used a wide belt to hit my head in such a way that
my skin was pulled from my skull. At one point I realised
that they were hitting the hair area so I didn’t end up with bruises on my
face, and I raised my head so they hit my eyebrow.” Oleg’s white shirt
was covered in blood. “They said ‘look, he ruined his face’. Makarov said ‘no
big deal. Now we'll break his nose and then say that he fell down the
stairs.’ They pulled me up and he [Makarov] put one of his hands next to my
shoulder bone, while he used the other hand to grab my head and hit it
against the table. However, I managed to turn my head and instead of hitting
my nose, they hit my eyebrows again. This time, the other eyebrow started to
bleed.” Oleg fell on the
floor and they started to hit and kick him. He started to shout and the head
of the department came running, telling them to stop as they already had all
the evidence they needed. As a result of the
torture, Oleg was left with several injuries including wounds around the
eyebrows, extravasations on the chest, right shoulder, right cheek, both
thighs, right buttock, around both eyes, as well as
bruising of the left eye socket and bruises around the left eyelid. Torture
in the Russian Federation International
Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (irct) Developed in
collaboration with the Interregional Non-governmental Organization “Committee
Against Torture” (INGO CAT), June 2014 www.irct.org/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2fpublications%2fCountry+factsheets%2fCF+Russia+-+PUBLIC+EDIT+pdf.pdf [accessed 23 June
2015] The inadequate
definition of torture in national law, which is not in line with United
Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), leads to victims facing
difficulties in accessing legal help. Compounding this is a lack of
independence of the prosecution and judiciary, leading to impunity. There are
no state programs of rehabilitation for victims of torture and there is no
definition of a torture victim. Office
of Russian Anti-Torture NGO Attacked in Chechen Capital The Moscow Times, 3
June 2015 www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/office-of-russian-anti-torture-ngo-attacked-in-chechen-capital/522955.html [accessed 21 June
2015] themoscowtimes.com/articles/office-of-russian-anti-torture-ngo-attacked-in-chechen-capital-47085 [accessed 1 August
2017] Masked men stormed
the Grozny office of the Committee Against Torture, a
prominent human rights NGO, on Wednesday morning, the organization
said via its Twitter account. The Committee
Against Torture wrote on its official Twitter page Wednesday that masked men
had vandalized its vehicle and broke down the door to its office. Other
members of a mob that had gathered near the office climbed onto its balcony
and tried to break a window, the NGO said. The men vandalized
the office as the organization's employees escaped through a window. No police units
were dispatched to the scene, according to the Committee Against Torture. The Committee
Against Torture was founded in 2000 by rights activists from the city of
Nizhny Novgorod and monitors cases of torture and violent treatment in
Russia. The organization also offers legal and medical support to victims of
torture. Committee
Against Torture is recognized as victim in arson case Vestnik Kavkaza,
15 March 2015 vestnikkavkaza.net/news/society/67905.html [accessed 30 March
2015] The NGO
"Committee Against Torture" has been recognized as a victim in a
criminal investigation into an arson attack on the office of the Joint Mobile
Group in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny. The arson attack
took place in December 2012. The attack caused the Committee Against Torture
damage estimated at approximately 260 thousand rubles. Eight Ex-Officers
In Tatarstan Sentenced In High-Profile Torture Case Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty RFE/RL, 16 June 2014 [accessed 17 June
2014] Eight former police
officers in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan have
been sentenced to prison terms of between two and 15 years in a high-profile
torture case. A court on June 16
found the eight defendants guilty of abuse of power and inflicting bodily
injury that led to death. A probe against the
eight officers was launched in 2012 after the death of a suspect arrested by
police in Kazan for alleged hooliganism.
Before his death in hospital, the man told doctors that police had
tortured him and raped him with a bottle. Witness in Trial
Against Former Makhachkala Mayor Alleges Torture Matthew Bodner, The Moscow Times, Issue 5306, 10 February 2014 www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/witness-in-trial-against-former-makhachkala-mayor-alleges-torture/494169.html [accessed 11 Feb
2014] The key witness in
the trial against former Makhachkala mayor Said Amirov
says he was coerced in to giving false testimony by the Federal Security
Service, one of Amirov's defense lawyers told Ekho Moskvy. Statements made by
the witness, Magomed Abdulgalimov,
in which he claims to have been subjected to electroshock torture by FSB
officers were provided to Amirov's former defense
attorney, Vladimir Postanyuk said. Russian prisons are
essentially torture chambers Emma Wallis,
Deutsche Welle DW-WORLD.DE, 22 November 2013 [accessed 23 Nov
2013] I don't think that you
can influence Russia's judicial system, or the
federal penitentiary system from the outside very much at all. Nothing can be
changed until you start arresting the people who work in the system. For
torture, verbal abuse, rape, battery … for planting illegal drugs, explosives
and weapons on people and putting them away. Until you start putting these
people behind bars in Russia, any reforms of the penal system in Russia will
be impossible. It's very important for these things to be voiced, written, spoken about, because we are seeing that public opinion
can be changed. 23rd General Report
of the CPT - European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment - 1 August 2012 - 31 July 2013 Council of Europe,
Strasbourg, 6 November 2013 www.west-info.eu/files/Council-of-Europe-23rd-General-Report-of-the-CPT-20131.pdf [accessed 7 Nov
2013] [Dagestan] 55. A significant
proportion of the detained persons interviewed by the CPT’s delegation made
allegations of recent ill-treatment by law enforcement officials. The ill-treatment
alleged was frequently of such severity as to amount to torture (e.g.
electric shocks, asphyxiation with a gas mask); this was particularly the
case in the Republic of Dagestan and the Chechen Republic, although some very
serious allegations were also received in North Ossetia-Alania. In the vast
majority of cases, the torture/severe ill-treatment was said to have been
inflicted at the time of questioning by operational officers, either during
the initial period of deprivation of liberty or (and) during periods when
remand prisoners were returned to the custody of law enforcement agencies for
further investigative purposes. In a considerable number of cases, the
delegation gathered medical evidence that was fully consistent with recent
torture or other forms of severe ill-treatment; a selection of individual
cases is given in the CPT’s report in respect of each of the three Republics
visited. Conclusions and recommendations
of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/RUS/CO/4
(2007) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/russia2007.html [accessed 5 March
2013] Safeguards for
detainees Laws and practices
that obstruct access to lawyers and relatives of suspects and accused
persons, thus providing insufficient safeguards for detainees, include: Internal
regulations of temporary facilities i.e. IVS (temporary police detention) and
SIZOs (pre-trial establishments), failures of the courts to order
investigations into allegations that evidence has been obtained through
torture, as well as reported reprisals against defence
lawyers alleging that their client has been tortured or otherwise
ill-treated, and which appear to facilitate torture and ill-treatment; The possibility of
restricting access to relatives of suspects in the interest of the secrecy of
the investigations provided for in article 96 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure; The Law on
Operative-Search Activity, as well as the federal Law No. 18-FZ of 22 April
2004, amending article 99 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, according to which
suspects of “terrorism” may be detained for up to 30 days without being
charged; The reported
practice of detention of criminal suspects on administrative charges, under
which detainees are deprived of procedural guarantees. Widespread use of
torture The Committee is
concerned at: The particularly
numerous, ongoing and consistent allegations of acts of torture and other
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment committed by law
enforcement personnel, including in police custody; The law enforcement
promotion system based on the number of crimes solved, which appears to
create conditions that promote the use of torture and ill-treatment with a
view to obtaining confessions; The information of
the State party that representatives of international organizations other
than the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture can talk to
prisoners only when accompanied by representatives of the administration. Investigations and
impunity The insufficient
level of independence of the Procuracy, in particular
due to the problems posed by the dual responsibility of the Procuracy for prosecution and oversight of the proper
conduct of investigations, and the
failure to initiate and conduct prompt, impartial and effective
investigations into allegations of torture or ill-treatment. Use of evidence
obtained through torture While the Code of
Criminal Procedure states that evidence obtained by torture shall be
inadmissible, in practice there appear to be no instruction to the courts to
rule that the evidence is inadmissible, or to order an immediate, impartial
and effective investigation. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT Allegations of torture
and other ill-treatment remained widely reported and effective investigations
were rare. Law enforcement officials allegedly frequently circumvented the
existing legal safeguards against torture through, among other things: the
use of secret detention (particularly in the North Caucasus); the use of
force supposedly to restrain violent detainees; investigators denying access
to a lawyer of one’s choice and favouring specific
state-appointed lawyers who were known to ignore signs of torture. In March, one
torture case in Kazan was widely reported in the media after a man died of
internal injuries in hospital. He claimed that he had been raped with a
bottle at the police station. Several police officers were arrested and
charged with abuse of power, and two were later sentenced to two and
two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment respectively. Many more allegations of
torture by police in Kazan and elsewhere followed media reports of this case.
In response to an NGO initiative, the Head of the Investigative Committee
decreed to create special departments to investigate crimes committed by law
enforcement officials. However, the initiative was undermined by the failure
to provide these departments with adequate staff resources. NORTH CAUCASUS Rustam Aushev, a 23-year-old resident of Ingushetia, was last
seen on 17 February at Mineralnye Vody railway station in the neighbouring
Stavropol region. The next day, his relative spoke to staff at the station.
They reported seeing a young man being detained by plain-clothes men and
driven away in a Gazelle minivan, which was also captured on CCTV. A security
guard had reportedly spoken to the minivan’s driver asking it to be parked in
the designated area, and was shown an FSB official’s ID. Rustam
Aushev’s family reported these details to the
authorities and demanded an investigation, but his fate and whereabouts were
unknown at the end of the year. In Ingushetia, the
first ever trial of two former police officials concluded in Karabulak. Some charges related to the secret detention
and torture of Zelimkhan Chitigov
although the officials faced other charges as well. The announcement of the
verdict was postponed repeatedly for almost three months, and on 7 November
the judge sentenced one defendant to eight years’ imprisonment, and fully
acquitted the other, his former superior. Allegations of intimidation of
victims and witnesses had persisted throughout the trial, during which both
defendants remained at large. No other perpetrators were identified despite Zelimkhan Chitigov naming at
least one other official by name and alleging that many others had been
involved in the incessant bouts of torture during the three days he was kept
in secret detention. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 6 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Not Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/russia [accessed 11
February 2013] LONG URL
ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] Critics charge that
Russia has failed to address ongoing criminal justice problems, such as poor
prison conditions and law enforcement officials’ widespread use of illegal
detention and torture to extract confessions. In some cases, there has also
been a return to the Soviet-era practices of punitive psychiatry. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61671.htm [accessed 11
February 2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61671.htm [accessed 5 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices; however, there were credible reports that law
enforcement personnel frequently engaged in torture, violence, and other
brutal or humiliating treatment or punishment to coerce confessions from
suspects and that the government did not consistently hold officials
accountable for such actions. Although prohibited in the constitution,
torture is defined neither in the law nor the criminal code. As a result, the
only accusation prosecutors could bring against police suspected of such
behavior was that they exceeded their authority or committed a simple
assault. Cases of physical
abuse by police officers usually occurred within the first few hours or days
of arrest. Some of the methods reportedly used were: beatings with fists,
batons, or other objects; asphyxiation using gas masks or bags (at times
filled with mace); electric shocks; or suspension by body parts (for example,
suspending a victim from the wrists, which are tied together behind the
back). Allegations of abuse were difficult to substantiate because of limited
access by medical professionals. There were credible reports that both
government forces and Chechen fighters in Chechnya tortured detainees (see
section 1.g.). Reports by refugees,
NGOs, and the press suggested a pattern of police beatings, arrests, and
extortion directed at persons with dark skin or who appeared to be from the
Caucasus, Central Asia, or Africa, and at Roma. For example in June 2004 the
press reported that in Novosibirsk 4 policemen were arrested on suspicion of
extorting over $1 million (28 million rubles) from a Romani family by
kidnapping and torturing family members until their demands were met. The
policemen were reportedly later tried and convicted. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Russia", http://gvnet.com/torture/Russia.htm, [accessed <date>] |
