The operatives whom the anti-fascist accused of torture were allowed to visit him in the pre-trial detention center

The leadership of the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region refused to deny access to the pre-trial detention center to anti-fascist Viktor Filinkov to operatives whom he accused of using torture. This was reported by Kommersant with reference to lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov.

On March 24, Cherkasov received from the FSB department a refusal to remove from operational support of Filinkov’s case “all employees who detained him and were in contact with him” from January 23 to 24, and whom Filinkov accused of torture. The lawyer also asked to prohibit them from visiting his client in the pre-trial detention center, so that the operatives would not have the opportunity to put pressure on him. According to the refusal of the FSB, a decision to remove employees can only be made based on the results of an inspection by the Investigative Committee.

On March 21, at a court hearing, Filinkov stated that he was detained on January 23 and taken to the Ministry of Internal Affairs department for fingerprinting. Later he was taken to hospital No. 26, where FSB officers received a certificate of normal health. Then, according to Filinkov, they took him out of town and tortured him for five hours using a stun gun until they obtained a confession. The accused later renounced them. Filinkov states that only after this he was taken to the FSB and officially detained. The FSB investigator refused to answer the question in court about what happened to Filinkov between January 23 and 25.

At the same meeting, the Dzerzhinsky District Court extended Filinkov’s imprisonment until June 22.

On January 31, Filinkov wrote a statement to initiate a criminal case against the FSB officers involved in his detention and beating. In March, it became known that the application was transferred for pre-investigation to the Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee for the Western Military District.

• Viktor Filinkov is accused of participating in the terrorist organization “Network” (Part 2 of Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code). He previously admitted guilt, but later stated that he did it under torture. Members of the Public Monitoring Commission of St. Petersburg recorded numerous traces of burns from a stun gun on Filinkov’s body, which highly likely confirms the version of torture.
• In October 2017, five people were arrested in Penza. They were accused of participating in a terrorist community. According to the FSB, the young people were allegedly members of an underground organization called “Network”, whose cells existed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza and Belarus. According to the security forces, the organization was preparing “unrest.” Many defendants in the terrorism case in Penza spoke about psychological pressure, electric shock torture, “hanging upside down” and other abuses they were subjected to after their arrest.
• One of the witnesses in the case in St. Petersburg also spoke about torture. He was forced to leave Russia and ask for political asylum in Finland.