Memorial: Four Muslim prisoners removed from Rostov pretrial detention center after hostage taking; human rights activists believe they may be tortured

The Memorial Human Rights Center reported that after an attempted escape from Pretrial Detention Center No. 1 in Rostov-on-Don, during which prisoners took FSIN officers hostage, at least four Muslim prisoners were taken out of the detention center. Human rights activists fear that they may be tortured to force them to confess that they were accomplices of the captors. Three of them are Chechens, one is a Dagestani, they were transported to Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Taganrog and are not allowed to see lawyers.

Among them is Magomed Alkhanov, accused in the case of the attack on Pskov paratroopers in February 2000 - he was then 17 years old. Memorial believes that the case against him was fabricated.

Human rights activists write that in the Rostov pretrial detention center, Alkhanov was held in the same cell with the escape participants. The day after the hostage taking, the man told his lawyer that he did not know about his cellmates' plans and reported this to the investigator who interrogated him and "three other employees, presumably FSB."

"However, they demanded that he admit that he knew about the planned escape. Alkhanov refused, and they told him that they would 'meet again,'" Memorial writes.

According to human rights activists, after the release of the hostages, Alkhanov and “many other prisoners who profess Islam” were beaten by special forces, but their relatives did not report this, fearing that this would only make things worse.

At the end of June, Alkhanov's relatives learned that he had been transferred to a solitary confinement cell. The lawyer was twice denied a meeting with his client "under mocking pretexts": the first time, the staff told him that prisoners were throwing bottles out of the windows and there was no way to take Alkhanov out, and the second time, that the cell door lock was broken. Finally, on July 1, the lawyer managed to get a meeting - Alkhanov confirmed that he was in a solitary confinement cell, said that he was restricted in walks, and was not given hygiene products or personal belongings.

Three days later, his wife came to visit the prisoner, but she was told that the man had been transferred to another detention center. Having learned that Alkhanov was in Taganrog's SIZO-2 (the staff refused to say where exactly he had been transferred), the lawyer went there on July 8, 9, and 10, but each time he was told that the prisoner himself refused to meet with him. The lawyers for the other three prisoners transferred to Taganrog along with Alkhanov faced the same problem: the detention center staff issued "written refusals of lawyers' services, allegedly written by the prisoners themselves."

Six inmates of Rostov's SIZO-1 took two prison employees hostage on the morning of June 16. They had knives, sharpeners, an Islamic State flag, and bandanas with Arabic script. The men demanded a car, weapons, and the opportunity to leave the prison. Several hours later, the Federal Penitentiary Service reported that the attackers had been killed and the hostages had been released.

One of the attackers, Daniil Kamnev, survived. On July 4, the Leninsky District Court arrested him. He did not participate in the hearing. According to Donday , he was wounded in the head during the storming of the pretrial detention center. When he regained consciousness , he was transferred to the FSIN hospital and interrogated . He is charged with hostage-taking (Part 3 of Article 206 of the Criminal Code), escape from prison (Part 3 of Article 313), and disruption of the work of the colony (Part 3 of Article 321 of the Criminal Code).

Kamnev was in the Rostov pretrial detention center on charges of involvement in the radical Islamic movement At-Takfir Wal-Hijra. The Sova Center reported that Kamnev was previously a Nazi skinhead. In 2013, he was sentenced to 9 years in prison on charges of intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm (Article 111 of the Criminal Code) for participating in a mass brawl. He converted to Islam in prison.

On July 11, the same court arrested another person accused of escaping from the pretrial detention center, 24-year-old Malik Gandaloev. He is charged with escaping from custody with the use of violence (Part 3 of Article 313 of the Criminal Code). Gandaloev was the only prisoner who was detained almost immediately, so he did not participate in the hostage-taking. The Mash Telegram channel claimed that during his arrest, he injured the detention center employees with a sharpened object.

After the hostage taking in SIZO-1, the head of the FSIN department for Rostov Oblast, Dmitry Bezrukikh, and his first deputy, Vasily Gordeyev, resigned . Following an internal investigation, four FSIN employees were dismissed, and another 16 were disciplined.