Navalny accuses the leadership of the colony of torture him with insomnia. Is this really real torture? How dangerous is it? (Yes, this is torture, and it is dangerous)

Alexei Navalny said that in IK-2 in Pokrov, where he was serving a prison term, he is not allowed to sleep normally-due to the fact that he was recognized as "prone to escape." Politics lawyers say that his physical condition has already seriously worsened: in addition to imprisonment, he, in his own words, is deprived of normal medical care - while in prison he began to back back pain, and one leg almost did not work. "Medusa" found out whether it is possible to call what is happening and how dangerous it is for Navalny's health.

Alexei Navalny wrote a statement addressed to the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service Alexander Kalashnikov with a copy to the prosecutor general Igor Krasnov that he was deprived of sleep in the colony: an employee is approaching him eight times a night, includes a “patrol” system and announces that he “shoots a professional science of the convicted Navalny”, thereby waking him up. “That is, in fact, torture is applied to me with insomnia,” the politician said.

The fact that Navalny is not allowed to sleep and wake him every hour was written on her Instagram and his wife Julia, addressing President Vladimir Putin demanding to immediately free her husband. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has already replied that “we will not react to this appeal,” redirecting the question of the performance of the penalties.

Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova told Medusa that he was kept without sleep for two weeks: they check every two hours during the day, eight times at night.

“Every hour they come in, turn on the DVR, wake up loudly, shine in the face with a lantern, they say that this is an audit of Alexei Navalny, prone to escape,” she said. - This is just an unprecedented story, torture. We sent complaints to the Federal Penitentiary Service and to the General Office. We sent a request to IK-2, in which we ask us to explain why Navalny is deprived of continuous sleep, on what basis during sleep, from 22 to six in the morning, Navalny every hour wakes an employee of the institution allegedly to verify whether he had an escape? Are such checks of your own initiative? How do such checks correlate with the fact that Navalny constantly sleeps under the turned on a video camera? ”

On what basis is Navalny constantly checked in the colony?

As Navalny himself writes, he is constantly being checked due to the fact that on March 18, in the Moscow pre-trial detention center-1, he-as “prone to escape” -was put on a preventive account for a period of three months. The reason for this to the convict’s lawyers is still unknown, says Olga Mikhailova.

It is likely that a formal reason was that on December 29 hewas put on the federal wanted list the day before the end of the trial period in the case of Yves Rocher . The convict, who is on the federal wanted list, is immediately put on preventive records as “inclined to escape”, said Sergey Baldin, head of the colony of IK- 6 of the IK-6 of the IK-6 of the Orenburg Region. Confirmation of this can be found in court decisions on other cases (here is one example). Judges confirm the legality of the production of vocational school, although the FSIN employees refer to paragraph 24 of the Ministry of Justice Order . It states that the “tendency to escape” is the basis for this decision, but it is not said that the declaration on the wanted list is somehow connected with this tendency.

The explanation of the prosecutor's office on the supervision of compliance with laws in correctional institutions (that is, in prisons and colonies) states that when the convicts come there from the pre -trial detention center, the preventive accounting is maintained. “At a meeting of the commission of the institution of the penal system, specific preventive measures are being developed against them and employees are assigned to carry out preventive work within six months.”

The commission may withdraw the prisoner from the profile “no earlier than after three months of stay in the institution,” the prosecutor’s office emphasizes. But on the very first day after Navalny arrived in IK-2, he was extended to the preventive accounting period of up to six months “without any legal grounds,” he writes in his statement to the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service.

Can a person who is on preventive accounting every hour?

Navalny’s lawyers are unknown to the legal grounds that allow the FSIN employees from 22:00 to 6:00 to check the presence of the prisoner in the correctional institution in this way - that is, wake him up. With a request on this occasion, they turned to the management of IK-2.

Navalny himself, in a statement by the Director of the FSIN, refers to the order of the Ministry of Justice No. 295 of December 16, 2016 on the rules of the internal routine of correctional institutions, which says: "A continuous eight -hour dream of convicts and the provision of personal time are provided."

Medusa found instructions on supervision of convicted in correctional colonies, which directly says that it is necessary to check the presence of prone to escaped at night "without violating their continuous eight -hour sleep." This instruction lost force in 2000, but the norm for sleep migrated to the current instruction "On the supervision of convicts contained in correctional institutions." The Ministry of Justice approved her by order with the heading “for official use”, so it was not officially published.

However, recently unknown people sent the project “Gulag.net” the full text of the instruction. It says about checking the presence of persons prone to escape every two hours. Moreover, after the end, and before raising, this must be done in the same way as before - " without violating their continuous eight -hour sleep ." At the same time, Navalny, according to him, is checked not every two hours, as they say in this instructions, but more often every hour.

The courts in their decisions insist that the statement of the convicted person on preventive accounting is not a penalty. A vocational school should not additionally limit the rights of the convict.

Is this ordinary practice in prison - not let the prisoners sleep?

The head of the human rights organization “Committee against torture” Igor Kalyapin said “Medusa” that he had not encountered situations like the one described by Navalny and his lawyers:

“There were complaints that a person was not allowed to sleep during interrogation - a day, two. I traveled a lot to the colonies, talked with those who are inclined to escape. They were simply more often checked by the operatives, they have a more stringent regime, they are not assigned to work related to independent movement along the colony, they are not allowed for long-term dates, they have no chance of UPO [conventional-free release]. For 25 years, no one woke up once per hour of the “patrol” system and a lantern. Moreover, I know for sure that there are no such prescribed protocols - even in those chipboard that I saw. To be honest, in shock from what I heard, all this must be checked. You have to go to the colony - it is really torture, damage to mental health. I know about the torture of sleep deprivation only theoretically - Guantanamo , NKVD, Gestapo. I repeat, in my practice this was not. ”

However, a former FSIN officer, who served in the Mordovian colony, told Medusa that the bypass and wolves of prisoners in the 1990s were ordinary practice. “I can’t name internal orders, but back in the 1990s, the younger inspectors, appointed by the duty assistant to the head of the colony bypassing the residential area, walked through the detachments with flashlights and watched“ Professornikov ”every two hours. Depending on the mood of the shift, some woke up such prisoners to introduce them. After all, a person can sleep facing the wall, covering his face with a blanket. ”

What is happening with Navalny is really torture?

It is difficult to evaluate what is happening from a legal point of view, because in international law there are quite few ( PDF. ) It is said about the deprivation of sleep as a form of torture. At the same time, in specific cases, the courts sometimes recognize the deprivation of sleep or its regular interruption by brutal circulation.

Judges of the European Court of Human Rights believe that if the prisoner was given at least six hours (even if more is laid by the law), such conditions cannot be recognized as torture. But in the case of “Guluyev against the Russian Federation” (2008), they recognized the deprivation of the concluded continuous sleep and other inhuman conditions during the transfer of a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms “Prohibition of Torture”. Guluyev woke up every two hours, referring to regular checks prescribed by the instructions.

Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director of Amnesty International for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, believes that torture should be talked in the case of Navalny.

“The deprivation of sleep can be equal to torture and other cruel, inhumane and humiliating human dignity. According to information from Alexei Navalny, transmitted through lawyers, starting on March 11, he is systematically deprived of sleep - every night the guards will wake him up eight times. In this connection, there is hardly doubt that we are talking about torture or other cruelty.

Messages about the deterioration of the state of health of Navalny also cause extreme concern along with his allegations that for several days he was refused medical care. ”

It is characteristic that in the “CIA manuals for interrogation” ( PDF. ) - a document used by the American special services during the Vietnamese War and is considered a kind of “guide to torture” - it is recommended to interrupt the dream of prisoners, and not deprive it at all, since this weakens their will to resist. True, in this case, it was about obtaining military information at interrogations.

How hazardous for health is sleeping?

It is difficult to evaluate the danger of imprisonment for prisoners, since scientific research is usually carried out in less extreme conditions that are not associated with imprisonment. Experts have no doubt , nevertheless, that all those factors that already adversely affect health in prison (lack of quality medical care, unsanitary conditions, restriction of freedom of movement) are sharply intensified in case of deprivation of a prisoner of sleep.

The average data suggest that sleep is less than six hours associated with long -term health problems. However, each person has his own norm of sleep, and if you sleep less than what is needed, it can lead to health problems.

The quality of sleep is also important. And it suffers if a person constantly wakes up at night. In the short term, the lack of quality sleep can lead to cognitive impairment. Simply put, thinking, attention, reaction rate and the ability to cope with complex tasks suffer. The mood also changes: a person can become more irritable, depressed, anxious. A person feels more acutely .

If a person does not sleep enough for a long time, then he has a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, higher vulnerability to infectious diseases and generally higher the risk of premature death.

Svetlana Reuters, Denis Dmitriev , Daria Sargsyan and Maxim Solopov