Torture is a special event

Gulagu.net informant Sergei Savelyev told the BBC how he obtained a video archive of prisoners being tortured. A brief summary

My name is Sergey Savelyev. I am 31 years old, I am from Belarus and I have been transmitting to Gulagu.net all those horrible images that have now been disseminated in the media. I was detained in Russia in 2013 when I came to earn money. I was sent a parcel with questionable substances, and half an hour later the riot police burst in. I was given nine years under the article on drug trafficking. I ended up in a penal colony in Saratov. Before the New Year 2016, I caught a cold and ended up in OTB-1 . There I spent two years collecting recordings from video recorders - the simplest recordings. They were keeping an eye on me. I don’t remember when I first saw a video of torture. Torture is a special event, everything is done not by an employee, but by one of the prisoners. I always understood that they would bring a video recorder now and there would be horror in it. It took me a while to digest it. And I decided to collect videos, not yet knowing why. Recordings should not be kept: the events are done — that's it, delete them. I didn't always manage to copy them, but what I did manage to, I methodically archived and hid. The plan was formed in 2019, and two years later I realized that I would turn to Vladimir Osechkin . If this had been revealed before I was released, I probably would not have been released. I was afraid that I would be tortured if I was not careful. Everyone says that it is impossible to take out a disk with recordings. But I knew how it works, what to expect from these people. And everything worked out.

In September, I flew from Minsk to Novosibirsk. I was stopped at a transfer in St. Petersburg. They thoroughly searched my things. During interrogation, they said that they had tapped my phone, read my messenger, and were aware of my cooperation with Osechkin. They presented me with a fait accompli: you will go to jail and they will kill you there. They offered to cooperate. They interrogated me as a witness. I signed a promise to appear, and they let me go. I had a choice - to live or to die. I chose to live. While I was in Russia, they wrote to me on Telegram all the time. They offered to meet in Moscow. I was sure that they would not let me leave Russia. I flew to Moscow, but did not go on a transfer. And I took a minibus to Belarus. I spent about a day at home. I did not advertise my departure. Stress, fear, just panic. I flew to Istanbul, then to Tunisia and Paris. I had a memorized phrase about political asylum, I repeated it like a mantra to one policeman, a second, a third. No one understood. They invited a translator, many thanks to him, he was understanding, said that it was a common thing. I was sent to the deportation center. And then a positive decision came on my issue.

This is a rough retelling of Sergei Savelyev's interview with the BBC. Quotes in the first person are not necessarily verbatim.



Retold by Alexander Baklanov

Cover photo: Evgeny Epanchintsev / TASS