The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture reported on its work in Russia and called on the authorities to protect prisoners who report abuses by guards

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe has published its 24th annual report. The document talks, among other things, about the situation of Russian prisoners.

As stated in the 86-page report, since 2012, representatives of the organization have made six visits to Russia. In particular, they managed to get into temporary detention centers and pre-trial detention centers in Moscow, the Leningrad region, Bashkiria and Tatarstan, pre-trial detention center No. 2 of the Vladimir region (Vladimir Central) and maximum security colony No. 1 in Udmurtia. “In Moscow and St. Petersburg, most detainees are less likely to complain about how they are treated by law enforcement, but in the regions we have received allegations of physical abuse,” the report says. In particular, the authors of the document claim, minor prisoners complained of ill-treatment. “In some cases, the ill-treatment was so severe that it could almost be called torture: electric shock; suffocation using a gas mask or plastic bag; severe beating, often with hands, feet tied and blindfolded; forcing the detainee to bend forward in a chair, tying his hands behind his back and placing heavy objects on his back - this method is called “televizor” (in particular, in February 2013 this torture applied to a 17-year-old detainee by officers of police department No. 1 in the Demsky district of Ufa - MZ); setting fire to genitals,” the report’s authors list. Having analyzed the situation of Russian prisoners, the Committee called on the country's authorities to intensify efforts to prevent ill-treatment by police officers and employees of other departments (including the Federal Drug Control Service, the Federal Migration Service and the FSB). At the same time, the organization acknowledges that in recent years the Russian authorities have made attempts to cope with overcrowding in prisons and improve conditions in them. “The Committee is also pleased to note that steps are being taken to move away from the multi-occupancy cell system. At the same time, the committee repeats its long-standing recommendation to the Russian authorities to legislate the conditions and size of living space that prisoners should be provided with,” the document notes. The last visit of representatives of the organization to Russia took place in November-December 2014. Its purpose was to analyze the situation of prisoners serving life sentences. To check, the delegation visited two colonies for those sentenced to life imprisonment - colony No. 6 in Sol-Iletsk, Orenburg region, and colony No. 2 in Solikamsk, Perm region. The authors of the report do not report the results of this check. Summarizing the results of the year's work, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture calls on all countries to provide protection to prisoners who complain about prison officials and make cases of abuse public. According to the report, retaliation for complaints about violations of the law most often takes the form of “restrictions on salary, confinement in solitary confinement for fabricated disciplinary violations or under the guise of security concerns, transfer to cells with worse conditions, pressure through other prisoners, assault and other types of abuse." Most often, according to the committee, such cases are observed in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Moldova and Spain. “Intimidation or retaliation against people interviewed by our committee not only violates their human rights, but also strikes at the preventive mechanism established by the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture,” says committee president Latif Huseynov.