Putin is authorized to blame

Mediazon recalls the riot in the former colony of Khodorkovsky, why the prisoners went to such extreme measures and as the employees of the FSIN prevented the work of investigators.

On September 1, in the Krasnokamensky City Court, interrogations of the victims of the IK-10 employees in the Chita Territory, which were involved in brutal bullying after a riot in the colony in 2011, began in the Krasnokamensky City Court. In the Krasnokamenskaya IK-10 until 2009, the ex-head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky was serving a sentence, then he was transferred to Moscow for the court in the second criminal case.

As the head of the Transbaikal human rights center Anastasia Kopteev told Mediazone, 30 people were recognized as victims of the case. At the bench of the defendants - eight colony officers who are charged with abuse of authority with the use of violence, weapons or special equipment (P.P. “A” and “B” of part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code).

The outrage of the prisoners of the colony, which they explained by the absence of other ways to draw attention to torture in the colony, began on the night of April 17, 2011. As a result of the unrest, a fire broke out, which destroyed most of the colony: the majority of residential buildings, household and administrative buildings burned down.

Human rights activist Vitaly Cherkasov, who then led the Transbaikal human rights center, soon after what happened he said that the situation in this colony had long been heated. In his opinion, a fire that flashed simultaneously in different rooms is “a step of despair of most convicts who have no other ways to pay attention to their plighting public and supervisory authorities.”

Immediately after the fire, at about five in the morning, the FSIN employees entered the territory of the colony in camouflage uniforms, body armor, with rubber batons and shields in their hands. Beating the prisoners, they drove them to the parade ground and made everyone squatting everyone. After that, the prisoners began to be assigned one at a time to the duty unit and beat.

In particular, the colony staff lined up in a living corridor, according to which they forced the prisoners to run and beat them. At the prisoner Alexander Smolyaninov, who was recognized as the victims in the case, during the passage on this corridor, the dog handler set the German shepherd. The dog clutched the man’s thigh and pulled out a piece of meat. According to the case file, bleeding from the wound did not stop throughout 11 hours, while the prisoner was transferred from IK-10 to IK-5 in Chita. Only there, prison surgeons sewn the wound.

As the ex-widened Leonid Putin from Chita said at a meeting on September 1, he was stretched in front of the duty unit, in this uncomfortable position he stood for more than ten hours. All this time, employees from time to time struck Putin on the legs and kidneys, beat the liver, head and between the legs, hit a stamper.

After running along the living corridor, Putin was ordered to undress naked. When, after the inspection, the prisoner put on a prison robe, he was ordered to escape to the gas troops and squatted, leading his hands behind his head. There, one of the colony officers - Alexander Zinchenko - hit him on the back of his head, grabbed his hair and began to demand that Putin insult himself with obscene words.

When, after numerous complaints of prisoners and human rights activists, the Investigative Committee nevertheless opened a criminal case against the colony officers, the FSIN began to counteract the work of investigators, human rights activist Vitaliy Cherkasov told Mediazone. The beaten prisoners were transported by colonies in other regions of the country, which is why investigators could not access the victims to take evidence from them and carry out other investigative actions.

Some of the prisoners recognized as victims in the criminal case were returned back to IK-10, against whose employees the case was opened. After returning to the Krasnokamenskaya colony, they were again tortured by employees. Protesting, some of the prisoners opened their veins.

Leonid Putin was transferred back to IK-10 in June 2011. There he was placed in the ShISO camera, after which Zinchenko’s employee previously mocking Putin offered him to change his testimony in exchange for comfortable conditions of detention and relief of the regime.

The investigation of the criminal case against IK-10 employees was completed only in December 2012, and the trial of eight employees began only two years later-the indictment was read out by the Krasnokamensky City Court in the summer of 2014.