Freedom, not death

The legislation must introduce a norm obliging the courts to release seriously ill prisoners on the proposal of doctors. This was said by the Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova, TASS reports .

"I believe that the norm should be introduced into the legislation that will oblige the courts to free seriously ill prisoners from places of imprisonment," Moskalkova said. The Ombudsman explained that now the courts have such a right, but are not required to do this.

According to Moskalkova, in the course of an interdepartmental meeting on this problem, she proposed to consider the highest qualification collegium of judges to refuse the liberation of seriously ill prisoners, if they then died in places of imprisonment.

Andrei Babushkin, the head of the Commission for the assistance of the PMC and reform of the penitentiary system of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights, said that the HRC also acts with the initiative to oblige the courts to free seriously ill prisoners. According to the FSIN, the courts currently release only 44 percent of the convicts from the number represented by doctors to release due to illness. The head of the Special Commission noted that in places of imprisonment there are more than 20 thousand seriously ill, of which 14 thousand are HIV -infected.

In April, the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika said that in 2015, about four thousand prisoners died in Russian prisons. The main cause of deaths is poor medical care.

"The mortality among persons contained in the places of imprisonment remains high - in 2015 3977 people died. Moreover, 87 percent of them died from various diseases, including due to a weak medical base, a slow renewal of equipment, the absence of some types of medical services," Chaika said.

Half of the prisoners in Russian prisons are sick, said the Prosecutor General. Over 50 percent are drug addicts, carriers of tuberculosis, hepatitis or HIV infection. According to Chaika, the latter are at risk. "Now in isolation with such a virus there are more than 62 thousand people. They will wait for help except from the state, no one," he said.