Prosecutor asks for three years of prison for employees of Yaroslavl penal colony accused of torturing inmate

The Prosecutor has asked for three years of prison each for employees of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service Sergey Gusarinm, Sergey Kuzmin, and Vyacheslav Shashkin over torture of inmate Vazha Bochorishvili who had later died in a Yaroslavl penal colony, reports Russian outlet Mediazona, citing lawyer Irina Birukova.

The employees of the colony have been charged under Article on abuse of authority by use of force and weapons or special equipment.

The defence insists that the potential punishment is excessive, seeing as they only executed orders of the colony’s administration.

According to Birukova, one should not pay attention to the defence’s claims that “one of them was just holding [the inmate's] leg”, while “the other was just restraining [the inmate]”. “If all of these ‘justs’ hadn’t happened, if excessive force hadn’t been used, then Bochorishvili wouldn’t have fallen from the desk, his health wouldn’t have deteriorated, and the consequences wouldn’t have been this severe,” she clarified.

The lawyer noted that the accused had worked in the colony for a long time and known about the abuse of the inmates. “Yet none of them, until we published the video of the torture and went to the police, had come forward with a confession, had told about other crimes [being committed in the colony], had pleaded guilty, had repented,” she emphasised.

Georgian citizen Vazha Bochorishvili died in a prison hospital in May 2017. Three weeks before his death, he was beaten by the colony's employees for several hours for refusing to undergo a body search in the presence of a woman. Afterwards, the man, who had suffered from chronic diseases, was sent to solitary confinement.

Eventually, Bochorishvili started to bleed, he threw up blood but did not receive any medical assistance. Five days later, the inmate was transferred to a civilian hospital: medics discovered no less than 10 litres of free fluid in his abdominal cavity and soon returned him to the prison hospital.

“The patient is agitated, screaming, thrashing in his bed. He has a pronounced suffocation, feels as if there isn’t enough air, his psychomotor agitation is increasing; the patient knocks on the walls, asking for urgent help,” the prison paramedic noted.

Instead of calling an ambulance, the paramedic injected Bochorishvili with a sedative. He died soon afterwards. Bochorishvili had 1.5 years to go before his release.