"They put a grenade in my hands and said they would pull the pin." Volgograd resident who set fire to FSB building in protest against war claims torture

Igor Paskar, a native of the Volgograd region, accused of setting fire to the Krasnodar FSB department, told a court hearing on January 9 about how he was tortured after his arrest. His words were cited by Doxa and Mediazona .

In June 2022, Paskar threw a bottle of flammable liquid into the building of the FSB Directorate for Krasnodar Krai. As a result, according to the criminal case materials, "the door, the column, and the wall near the door" caught fire. The man was accused of terrorism and faces up to 15 years in prison. He admitted to arson, but does not consider himself a terrorist, his lawyer said .

In court, Paskar called his action anti-war. "My action is purely peaceful, it was supposed to show all opponents of this monstrous war that they are not alone, and to our Ukrainian neighbors that not everyone here is brainwashed by state propaganda," Mediazona quotes him as saying. After the action, Paskar did not try to run away, but, according to him, he painted his face yellow and blue and waited to be detained.

After his arrest, he refused to testify against himself. He was first taken to the courtyard of the FSB building, then to one of the offices, his hands were handcuffed and a bag was put over his head. “ After that, they started kicking him, they put a grenade or a dummy one in his hands and said they would pull the pin. They put a gun to his head and threatened to shoot. After that, they put rings on the middle fingers of both hands and started passing electric shocks,” Doxa quotes Paskar as saying. According to the man, he lost consciousness twice during the torture. In addition, they tried to rape him with some kind of rubber object.

As Mediazona writes, earlier, during the investigation, Paskar spoke to his lawyer about the torture with electric shocks, but at that moment he was not ready to talk about it publicly. "I don't want to report the torture, because I know that no one will be punished. Let it be on the conscience of those who tortured me. Everything will come back to them," he explained in correspondence with Mediazona.