HRC has found confirmation of torture

The Human Rights Council members finished working in the Karelian colony where an opposition member, Ildar Dadin, is kept. The acts of violence he had described were confirmed, as reported by a member of the HRC, Igor Kalyapin, on Tuesday.

"We have completed the work in Segezha, now we are going to write a memo and give it to the head of the HRC, Mikhail Fedotov. We will carefully analyze and calculate the evidence base and present the findings as lawyers do", — he said.

The Human Rights Council members finished working in the Karelian colony where an opposition member, Ildar Dadin, is kept. The acts of violence he had described were confirmed, as reported by a member of the HRC, Igor Kalyapin, on Tuesday.

"We have completed the work in Segezha, now we are going to write a memo and give it to the head of the HRC, Mikhail Fedotov. We will carefully analyze and calculate the evidence base and present the findings as lawyers do", — he said.

"To describe my impression as that of a person who communicated with the convicts, examined what was possible to see, looked at the rooms where it all happened, I formed the opinion that Dadin had described the events correctly", — he stressed.

The member of the HRC noted that some points might have been exaggerated by Dadin due to the fact that he is in prison for the first time, however, the events of which he spoke, "did take place."

Kalyapin said, that his colleague Pavel Chikov and him were not given any opportunity to read the documents from the personal file related to calling Dadin to disciplinary liability.

"He was called to disciplinary liability seven times, was put in a punishment cell several times, and for each of these cases there had to be a report from the staff who had identified the violations, there had to be explanations from Dadin himself, resolutions, reports and acts on the use of force and non-lethal weapons", — he added.

The human rights activists were planning to study these documents, because after Dadin had been questioned, there was a number of inconsistencies with the explanations that had been provided by the prison staff.

"These inconsistencies are easy to sort out — it was necessary to see the documents. We were told this morning that we wouldn't be given the documents, and that it was an order from the Moscow FPS. And this was done in violation of the original agreement", — said a member of the HRC.

The videos given were incomplete. Those records that HRC members hoped to see had been erased due to the fact that the video storage time is only 30 days.

Earlier Dadin's wife said that her husband was beaten, tortured and threatened to be killed in prison. The Human Rights Ombudsman, Tatiana Moskalkova, came to audit the situation in Karelia, where the convict is serving his sentence. She suggested transferring Dadin to another colony, but the Federal Penitentiary Service has not yet made that decision.

Ildar Dadin is the first and only person convicted for the violation of the law on rallies. In 2015, he was sentenced to three years in a penal colony, later the term was reduced to two and a half years.

Commentary from Alexey Kozlov, the expert of the project Inside Russia

Torturing detainees and prisoners has long become routine in Russia. But although it can be understood (but not accepted) in the case of detainees or convicted — to break the man, to make them confess on a fabricated case — the tortures in detention centers apparently are systemic in nature.

It should be noted that torture may be either direct or indirect. The indirect one we could see during trials on Bolotnaya case, when the accused were in a stuffy aquarium during the trial, almost did not sleep and did not eat.

Attention to Dadin's case and the current situation with him as to an obviously political case is very high both in Russia and in Europe. It is very important for raising the problem, because Dadin is not the only one who is tortured or was tortured in detention. Only constant informational and public pressure can reverse the situation.