Human rights activist: “Torture transporter” operates in Russian prisons
More than 10 military concentration camps have been created on the territory of Russia, in which thousands of Ukrainians are kept. The announcement was made by Russian human rights activist, founder of the public project Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin, during the hearings of the legal commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), held on Wednesday, March 22, in Paris. “We have evidence that sadists from the FSB and the Federal Penitentiary Service are using it against them (Ukrainian POWs). – Red.) cruel treatment and torture,” Osechkin said. He also said that “more than 40,000 convicts from Russian prisons were sent by Vladimir Putin to fight Ukraine.”
“Gulag Concept” applied in hospitals and schools
In October 2021, Vladimir Osechkin, who had already left Russia due to persecution by the authorities, said that he had at his disposal an extensive video archive that contained evidence of torture and rape of prisoners in Russian prisons, in particular, in the Tuberculosis of Saratov. Hospital No. 1 of the Federal Penitentiary Service (OTB-1). This file was handed over to the human rights activist in 2021 by former prisoner Sergey Savelyev, who was also forced to hide from persecution by Russian authorities abroad.
According to Osechkin, the “torture tube” in Russia’s federal penitentiary system continues to exist, and the FSB uses videos of the rape and torture of prisoners to blackmail them and obtain the “necessary” testimony. “I claim that torture in places of deprivation of liberty in Russia is systemic, it is a secret modus operandi of the FSB and the Federal Penitentiary Service,” said the human rights activist. He believes that the “GULAG concept” is used not only in Russian prisons, but also “in the police, army, medical institutions, psychiatric hospitals and schools.”
Osechkin handed PACE’s legal committee a hard drive that he says contains about 115,000 files that back up his words. “I hope that you will help conduct the investigations and bring high-ranking officials from the FSB and the Federal Penitentiary Service to justice,” said the human rights activist.
Did the FSB torture Belarusian oppositionists?
Sergei Savelyev, who also participated in the hearings, also called for an international investigation into the facts of torture in Russian prisons. From 2016 to 2021, Savelyev served time in OTB-1 and served as “assistant to the head of the security department” of the prison hospital. “I was required to keep video files of torture, beatings, rapes and murders committed by agents of the Federal Penitentiary Service against prisoners,” the activist told committee members. According to him, in the last ten years, “thousands of prisoners” who were brought from different regions of Russia underwent torture used in OTB-1.
Savelyev, who is a citizen of Belarus, also said that in 2020, representatives of Russian secret services “flew to Minsk to take part in the brutal torture” of opposition demonstrators.
PACE legal committee hearings on torture and inhuman treatment in places of detention in Europe were held as part of the preparation of the relevant report and resolution of the assembly. The commission’s rapporteur, the Cypriot deputy of the group of socialists Konstantinos Efstatius, mentioned that he will include in his report facts about systematic torture in places of detention, which were recorded by experts of the Committee of the Council of Europe (EC) for the Prevention of Torture in various member countries of the organization. “I also included Russia in the report. Although it is no longer a member of the Council of Europe, the decision to prepare this resolution was taken before it was excluded”, explained the speaker. He also noted that he had taken into account the calls in several PACE resolutions to continue monitoring the development of the human rights situation in the Russian Federation.
Source: DW
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