Translated material
Kostroma slave owner received seven years in prison
A resident of the Kostroma region was found guilty of kidnapping two people and using slave labor, the investigative department of the Investigative Committee for the region reported on Tuesday.
By a court verdict, a 47-year-old individual entrepreneur was sentenced to seven years in prison to be served in a high-security correctional colony.
According to the case materials, in April 2009, the accused arrived in his car in Kostroma, where he found a 40-year-old resident he knew and demanded that he go with him to work at the sawmill. Having received a refusal, the attacker kidnapped the man using violence and handcuffs. Then he brought the man to the village of Dubki, Kady district, Kostroma region, where he used the victim’s slave labor at a sawmill he owned until he ran away.
It was also established that in January 2011, the defendant organized an artisanal charcoal harvesting in the forest in the Kady district, where he set up wood kilns, a building for production and a building for workers, which was not suitable for human habitation. Over the course of a year, he fraudulently brought four more residents of Kostroma there and used their labor for free.
In addition, in July 2011, on one of the streets of Kostroma, he offered a job to an unfamiliar 57-year-old man. “Having received a refusal, he forcefully placed the man in the car, blocked the rear doors and brought the victim to a forested area for production, where he also used his slave labor,” the report says.
The accused systematically beat the victims and threatened them with violence if they refused to work.
In August 2011, two victims attempted to escape, but the “owner” found them on the road, placed them in the trunk of a car and brought them back. For escaping, he severely beat the men, breaking the jaw of one of them.
At the end of February 2012, victims of slavery were freed by law enforcement officials in the region.