In Bashkiria, a FSIN employee was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison for the murder of a prisoner in 2012

The Kalinin City Court of Ufa sentenced Rafkat Tazetdinov, an employee of the Bashkir correctional colony N4, to nine and a half years in a maximum security colony for the death of prisoner Sergei Lazko in 2012. Human rights activist Almira Zhukova wrote about this on Facebook .

As Zhukova notes, the Sterlitamak City Court acquitted Tazetdinov twice, but the Supreme Court of Bashkiria overturned the acquittal both times. As a result, the case was transferred to the Kalininsky District Court of Ufa, where Tazetdinov was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm, negligently resulting in the death of the victim (Part 4 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code), and of abuse of office (Article 285 of the Criminal Code).

According to Ekho Moskvy , Lazko was convicted of theft and in 2012 was supposed to be released from a colony in the city of Salavat-6. In July 2012, Lazko and several other people were transferred to a punishment cell for violating the regime. The prisoners complained to the republican PMC about beatings in the detention center.

After this, human rights activists came to the colony, including Almira Zhukova. It turned out that Lazko died from his injuries. At the same time, the expert report stated that he died due to heart failure, but there were many bruises and abrasions on the prisoner’s body. Based on the results of a repeated examination, it turned out that Lazko died from acute renal failure, which arose due to necrosis of the tissues of the pelvic area and hips.

At the end of April, Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika, at a board meeting with the participation of representatives of the Federal Penitentiary Service, said that in 2018 the number of cases of unjustified use of force against persons under investigation and convicts increased sharply. Based on these facts, 64 criminal cases were initiated. 67 officials of the Federal Penitentiary Service were brought to criminal responsibility, 38 of them have already been convicted.

Chaika noted that complaints from those arrested and convicted about unauthorized measures of influence were often left unattended, and internal inspections of the FSIN did not reveal significant violations. Prosecutor's checks have shown that penitentiary system employees do not use video recording devices required by law, thereby hiding crimes, or do not provide full versions of video recordings to prosecutors.

The Federal Penitentiary Service reported at the end of April that investigators, when taking prisoners from pre-trial detention centers for investigative actions, often return them “barely alive.” Deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service Valery Maksimenko said that last year the department refused to accept hundreds of prisoners with injuries into pre-trial detention centers and demanded that they be taken to the hospital.

Over the past year, the media have regularly raised the topic of torture of prisoners in Russian colonies after the sensational material of Novaya Gazeta about the cruel abuse of prisoner of the Yaroslavl colony N1 Yevgeny Makarov. Data on violence began to arrive from other regions.

The FSIN said that if one of the employees beats a prisoner, it means “ that particular employee has no brains , does not want to work, or does not have enough patience.” But comparisons with the Gulag that arose after publications about the atrocities of guards were shallow in the department, because in the camps, among other things, executions were also used.