Post by ck4829 on Mar 19, 2017 12:45:33 GMT
It’s been a little over two weeks since Ildar Dadin, a civil rights activist opposed to President Vladimir Putin’s long rule, was released from Russia’s sprawling penitentiary system, and the memories of the torture he says he suffered at the hands of prison guards are still raw.
“They beat me for three days, cuffed my hands behind my back, and hung me up by the wrists,” he told Vocativ, during an interview in Moscow. “They also pulled down my shorts and said they would bring in an inmate to rape me if I didn’t call off my hunger strike. I was considering suicide, because I realised that they had broken me, both physically and mentally, and I couldn’t see the sense in living anymore.”
A former security guard who was inspired by the mass protests that broke out against voter fraud during Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections, Dadin, 34, quickly became a familiar face at opposition rallies. In December 2015, he became the first and so far only person to fall foul of a controversial law cracking down on public dissent when he was jailed for three years, later reduced by six months on appeal. He had already spent almost a year under house arrest.
Under Russian law, Dadin should have been sent to a prison camp near his home in Moscow. Instead, he was transferred to a notorious penal colony in Karelia, a remote region in northwest Russia, where prison guards are said to torture inmates to the accompaniment of music by Lyube, Putin’s favorite Russian rock group. “I believe I was sent here deliberately, as punishment for my opposition activities,” Dadin said. Upon his arrival at the prison camp, he was thrown into solitary confinement, ostensibly for hiding two razor blades among his possessions. Dadin claimed the blades were planted on him by prison guards, and he went on a hunger strike in protest. He says the beatings and torture that followed were overseen by the penal colony boss, one Major Sergey Kossiev.
www.vocativ.com/412414/russia-putin-critic-prison-torture/
“They beat me for three days, cuffed my hands behind my back, and hung me up by the wrists,” he told Vocativ, during an interview in Moscow. “They also pulled down my shorts and said they would bring in an inmate to rape me if I didn’t call off my hunger strike. I was considering suicide, because I realised that they had broken me, both physically and mentally, and I couldn’t see the sense in living anymore.”
A former security guard who was inspired by the mass protests that broke out against voter fraud during Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections, Dadin, 34, quickly became a familiar face at opposition rallies. In December 2015, he became the first and so far only person to fall foul of a controversial law cracking down on public dissent when he was jailed for three years, later reduced by six months on appeal. He had already spent almost a year under house arrest.
Under Russian law, Dadin should have been sent to a prison camp near his home in Moscow. Instead, he was transferred to a notorious penal colony in Karelia, a remote region in northwest Russia, where prison guards are said to torture inmates to the accompaniment of music by Lyube, Putin’s favorite Russian rock group. “I believe I was sent here deliberately, as punishment for my opposition activities,” Dadin said. Upon his arrival at the prison camp, he was thrown into solitary confinement, ostensibly for hiding two razor blades among his possessions. Dadin claimed the blades were planted on him by prison guards, and he went on a hunger strike in protest. He says the beatings and torture that followed were overseen by the penal colony boss, one Major Sergey Kossiev.
www.vocativ.com/412414/russia-putin-critic-prison-torture/