Gulagu.net has at its disposal a large video archive of the Federal Penitentiary Service, containing videos of rape and torture of prisoners. According to the founder of the project, Vladimir Osechkin, “this proves that in the institutions of the FSIN there are Sonderkommandos of secret agents of the FSB and the FSIN, who, on the instructions of their curators, torture and rape prisoners, and the process itself is filmed on office video recorders, which they are given to film these tortures.” With the help of this incriminating evidence, people are forced to sign statements and cooperate with operatives.
Judging by the video recordings that “That's So” has at its disposal, prisoners are tied to beds with their legs and buttocks raised up. In some cases, a gag is inserted into the mouth, in others they simply cover the mouth and play music somewhere in the background. After this, the tied ones are raped. Sometimes a certain man tries to do this, whose face is not included in the frame. In other cases, a mop wrapped in tape or something similar is screwed into the anus in a spiral. Then the raped person is asked if he understood everything.
We are publishing the recording of the torture because we consider it to be socially significant evidence, but we warn you that the video may shock you.
According to Vladimir Osechkin , FSIN operatives made such video recordings for reporting to higher authorities, up to the generals.
“Gulagu.net has obtained new evidence that proves the systemic nature of torture and the involvement of employees of the State Institution of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and the operational departments of the Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Irkutsk Region, the Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Saratov Region and the Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Vladimir Region in these massive violent crimes.
We have at our disposal a number of files from the official video archive of the Federal Penitentiary Service, filmed on official video recorders in the period 2018–2020, which indicate that the FSIN operatives, obliged to identify and suppress crimes, actually instructed their agents from among the recruited convicts to torture, torment and to rape those under investigation and arrest, defendants and convicts, as well as to film these tortures and sodomy on the official video recorders of the Federal Penitentiary Service in order to collect incriminating evidence and subsequent blackmail of the victim of torture and, under the threat of discredit and transfer to the caste of the humiliated (the so-called downtrodden), hundreds of people were forced to “cooperation,” signing contracts to work as an in-camera agent (informer), to “cooperating with the investigation,” and signing testimony prepared by investigators that is convenient for investigators and clients,” says Osechkin.
Story
"Palestinian Hanging"
The prisoner's hands are handcuffed behind his back, then the handcuffs are secured to the bars of the cell so that his feet do not touch the floor. To prevent handcuffs from leaving marks on the wrists, the hands are first wrapped in soft cloth. A prisoner can be kept in this position for several days. “Hanging causes terrible pain in the wrists, in addition, the elbow joints are twisted, and you feel terrible pain in the back. So I hung there for half an hour,” wrote Ildar Dadin about torture in the Segezha colony.
“Until you crap yourself and piss yourself, we will continue”
The second former prisoner, Malkho Bisultanov, was sent to IK-7 in February 2015. He was forced to undress and take off his underpants.
Malkho Bisultanov:
— I asked permission to wrap myself in a towel or underwear, since I am a believer and cannot completely undress. The duty officer, Anatolyevich, asked: “Are you refusing to take off your panties?” I answered: “Yes.” He left. Three people attacked me, wrapped my arms, put a bag over my head and dragged me into an office opposite the toilet, handcuffed my hands and tied my legs. They put a hat with earflaps on his head over the bag and wrapped it with tape and wrapped it around his neck with tape. Then they put wires on the ring toes of both feet, doused my body with water and attached the wire to my genitals and shocked me. When I lost consciousness, they poured water on me again and hit me on my cheekbones.
When they shocked me, a healthy [large] man was sitting on my chest. He sat with his back to my face and held my knees when the electric shock made me bend over. The second one held his head, and the third one shocked him. I can’t say how long it lasted, since I periodically lost consciousness. When I was screaming and crying, the man who was holding my head, with his hand, either closed my mouth or opened it.
When I asked: “Why are you torturing me, what do you want from me?” They answered: “Until you crap yourself and wet yourself, we will continue.”
Then they pinched my nose so that I could only breathe through my mouth and gave me water through double pillowcases. When I started burping, the person holding my head turned me right and left. Then they removed one wire from the toe and put it on the head of the penis, doused the right side of the stomach, threw the wire there, and shocked him again. I fainted. When I woke up, they dragged me into some office. There was a cage in the corner of the office. They took me into a cage and fastened me to the cage: with one hand up, the other hand at the level of the middle of the cage, so that I could not sit down. Every hour they came and changed hands: they fastened the upper one down, and the lower one up. They told me to work with my hands so they wouldn't swell. But I couldn’t move my hands, I practically couldn’t feel them, and then they hit my hands, swore at me, called me names, twisted a key between my buttocks, and this continued until lunch the next day. I was completely naked, I had two pillowcases with vomit on my head, into which I belched during the torture.
The torture continued the next day - they beat Bisultanov with electric shock, hung him up, strangled him, tore out the hair on his chest, beat him on the feet, put a bag over his head and poured water into it.
Beatings
One of the most common and unoriginal methods of torture, which often involves a dozen executioners from both the colony staff and “activists” - prisoners working for the administration. To prevent beatings from leaving bruises and bruises, the beating weapon is wrapped in soft cloth - for example, a sweater or quilted jacket, which prisoners wear in winter. In Karelian IK-1, the administration, according to one of the prisoners, prefers to put heavy objects in felt boots to hit them on the head.
"Press huts"
Many prisoners work with the administration, the so-called active zone. Among them, parole release is usually the largest. They help maintain order in the colony among the convicts themselves, and the administration supports them. These are orderlies and caretakers in detachments.
Contrary to opinion, there is no unity among the convicts against the administration. Here it’s every man for himself, whoever eats who will survive. They themselves are quite critical of others, sometimes openly declaring about others “filthy convicts.”
It is certainly easier for those who work with the administration. He can receive commendations, which later influence his release, he has less chance of ending up in a punishment cell, and people can simply turn a blind eye to his minor violations.
About convicts beating or torturing convicts... yes, in some places this is present. The so-called press huts, where they extract confessions or “work” with a person to obtain other information, including inducing him to cooperate.
These are, as a rule, extreme measures, and not every convicted person will be affected by this. And all the menial work in the “press huts” is done, of course, not by employees—there won’t be enough of them either—but by other convicts. Assets.
In addition, there are also ordinary informers, “informers”, who also find out the necessary information in their own way. But the pursuit of “information” about a crime is not the main component of the reasons for the oppression of convicts. Basically, physical pressure is exerted not for the sake of some information, but for a completely different reason.
A person, entering a colony, does not want to live by its rules, does not want to sleep and wake up according to the regime, and does not obey the requirements of the administration. He wants to live his own life, as before, where he is his own boss.
For example, he was given 10 years in prison, and for 10 years he gets up at 06:00 in the morning, goes for exercises, goes to the canteen three times a day, stands at the divorce station twice a day, does not go further than his detachment, works according to the regime, lies down bed at 22:00 pm. In court they gave him 10 years of these charges, 10 years of this life.
Just think about it! Not everyone can stand it. And man openly rebels against this. Refuses to obey, get up in the morning, go to bed in the evening, go to the divorce... Then there are conversations, punishment cells, and then it’s not far from assault.
Rape
“After lights out, convicts from among the “actives”, unaccompanied by colony officers, entered the cell where I was kept, grabbed me and took me to another cell, where they laid me on a table. Having tied my arms and legs to the legs of the table, the “convicted activists” stuck their hands into my anus, which made me experience unbearable pain and suffering, and I was bleeding,” one of the former prisoners of IK-47 Kamensk complained to human rights activists -Uralsky. During rape, improvised objects are often used: bottles, chair legs, clubs.
The employee is a trash
The mechanism for controlling an employee is always the same - you will be fired. Always.
A step to the side, an awkward word in front of your superiors, a minor official violation - this is the last day of your service in the colony. They will demand a dismissal report by order; if you don’t write it, they will follow you around, demand, threaten with problems, and drag you to the certification commission. And they will fire you if necessary.
Dismissal is the main form of stimulation of employee service. Try working in a colony from wake-up until bedtime, from 06:00 to 22:00, and at the same time say that you don’t like something. Convicts have the right to “8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.” The employee does not have such a right. Because he works for a preferential pension - and less often beyond the day when it comes. Nobody works for work. Because the attitude towards the employee is often worse than towards the convicted persons themselves.
The employee is a redneck. Our head of the colony spoke directly at the divorces: “The main thing is the prisoners. You are the service staff." Therefore, an employee never has any other motivation for service. Always alone - I wish I could make it until retirement, but at least the grass won’t grow there.
There are cameras installed everywhere in the colonies, and there is no way to bypass them. Cameras record violations of both convicts and employees. Convicts are sent to a punishment cell, employees receive reprimands, moral lectures and dismissals. Who's so lucky?
For an employee to specifically look for a place where there is no video camera in order to beat up another convict there, well, it just makes you smile. From pure mathematics. When there are 1,500 prisoners in a colony, and there are 15 employees on duty shift. When will you have time to beat everyone?..
All these cases of beatings in colonies are, as a rule, specific circumstances. Communication began, the employee demanded, the convict was rude, did not do something, the employee used force, the convict resisted, and things went from strength to strength... Whoever has power is stronger and more to the right. Who in the dark corner of the colony looks at the law?
Control over an employee is, first of all, control over the work he does. No one specifically monitors the employee or his behavior, do what you want, think as you want, but so that the report on the work and the work itself are obvious. “Otherwise you will be fired and go to improve agriculture!”
© Alexander Demyanchuk/TASS
Torture by music
It can be applied to prisoners with unstable mental health: a person is placed in a punishment cell and loud music is turned on, which interferes with sleep, or the same song is played in a circle. Convicted chess player Yuri Shorchev says that he was forced to listen to songs by the band Rammstein: “Periodically, I was taken out of the cell into the corridor, naked, put on a stretcher, and Rammstein was played at full blast through the speaker above my head. Such a strong sound sometimes not only makes you deaf, it physically hurts terribly, and your ears bleed. The torture lasted all night. By the way, I listened to the same Rammstein every day in my cell - through a small speaker above the door. This kind of music could also drive you crazy. I wanted to scream!”
Why are they beating?
Facts of beatings, as a rule, both in life and behind bars, are spontaneous moments: I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Here are a couple of examples. The convict decided to express his protest against his failed life. He is serving his fifth or sixth term, all charges are serious. I’ve never worked - they have no idea. I broke the TV in the cell, a new plasma one. The cellmates will not pretend that there is nothing to watch, he is in authority. He broke it and demands a new one, because they have nothing to look at in the camera. And by law they must give it. And they will! The country and taxpayers will buy a new one.
The one who broke it was sent to a punishment cell. There he refused to go into the cell and began to resist. Fight - he has a couple of bruises. There was another protest in the cell - he took off the sink and broke the toilet with it. He demanded a new one - he needed to go to the toilet. They took me out again and punched me in the teeth. "For prevention." So as not to forget yourself. He got hit on the horns and sits quietly until he hits anything.
Another example. A convict goes to work in a colony, an employee stopped him, got to the bottom of some little detail - the power to show that he has a divorce to work where he is expected, and if he doesn’t show up, he can end up in a punishment cell for failure to show up for work.
Word for word with the employee: “Let me go, they’re waiting for me,” he won’t let me in, and said something offensive in response. This one spits in his face. The employee punches him in the face. Everyone sees. Other employees come running to help their colleague. As a result, the convict was in a punishment cell, and the employee... well, they scolded him not to do such things in public.
Most conflicts within prisons occur out of nowhere and last a short time. Less often “for prevention”. There is no such thing as mass beatings being ordered or carried out in the colonies on purpose. There won't be enough employees. Not only employees are beaten, but employees are also beaten. Although, of course, less. These facts are rarely made public, unlike the other side.
Torture by harsh conditions of detention
To put pressure on prisoners, colony administrations came up with several ways to worsen conditions of detention: turning off heating during the cold season and starving them. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova wrote about this from Mordovian IK-14: “It is incredibly cold in the punishment cell. This is an old move, studied by the camp authorities since Soviet times - creating an unbearably low temperature regime in the cells of the punishment cell so that the punishment turns into torture. I sit on a narrow cold bench and write. I have no right to sit on the bed - or even more so to lie on it. Dim cold light, only cold water in the tap.”
Indifference
The conditions themselves, the employee’s service itself does not allow you to feel sorry for anyone. This is a moral threshold beyond which you can fully work in a colony. As they say, “without snot and sentimentality.”
As a rule, the attitude of employees towards convicts is indifferent - this greatly helps in their work to look at things soberly.
And when you have a criminal case before you, and you read what this or that convict did before you met him behind bars, and sometimes you only say one thing: “To evil spirits!” How does the earth carry such people?
After all, there are maniacs, pedophiles, and killers of infants. There are also cannibals. And they all demand respectful treatment in the colony - by “right and by law.”
How can there be any respectful attitude towards them?..
This is already the level where “law and law” can move into the background. There is an opinion among employees that the most severe court verdict does not reach the heart of a maniac, but a blow with a boot in the face reaches to the very bottom of the soul.
I once met a convicted cook in a colony. Sociable, believes in God, always smiles, in good standing, a lot of gratitude, ready to fulfill any assignment, his bread is always fresh. He is preparing to be released on parole and asks for help, to write a good reference for the court.
“A hard-working guy,” I told someone about him once. And in response: “Read his sentence!” I wasn’t too lazy, opened a personal file, and started reading. I am an adult, and I have seen a lot of evil in my life, and this does not surprise me. But here I felt bad.
Twenty years ago, this cook lured a girl he knew to the river, who knew something about him - she knew how he killed someone while stealing. He lured her to the river to swim and drowned her. She was drowned, and her one-year-old son, who began to scream on the shore, was thrown into the fire. But either the fire was not burning well, or this cook was in a hurry, and instead of being lazy, he took the burnt child out of the fire, tore off the branches from the tree, began to choke him with willow twigs, and then trampled his head with his boots.
I asked about this the next time I met him. “Twenty years have passed. Only God has the right to judge me. I’ve been in good standing for fifteen years,” that’s what he replied. He answered, losing his temper, with anger, and did not smile.
Twenty years have passed... and on my part, for someone like him, there is no statute of limitations. And after two hundred years. And after twenty centuries.
Then I approached the right person, and his “fifteen years in good standing” ended. He was thrown into a punishment cell for a minor violation - either for smoking a cigarette, lighting it in the wrong place, or for sitting on the bed. He was kicked out of the kitchen for being in isolation, and no one there gave him early release as a violator.
Yes, there are some. But these are only a few. The saddest thing is that employees get used to lumping everyone with the same brush. All prisoners are equal, all prisoners are non-humans. What difference does it make what he's in jail for? Once I got here, it means I’m guilty. Not all employees understand or want to understand that a prisoner is a human being.
Sometimes a person sits down for a specific, principled act.
I met a convict, against whom his ex-girlfriend before the wedding wrote a statement that he raped him and stole his earrings. I didn't want him to live with someone else. He already has a family. Got five years. According to the nasty article. I served my time. How he sat for the “shaggy article” - one can only guess about it. During this time, the family broke up, in an accident someone died, either a wife or a child. But he got out, went to that friend and killed her. Got a new term. Already 12 years. He says: “I couldn’t do it any other way. She crippled my whole life. I just took revenge." God will be his judge. How many people, so many destinies.
© ITAR-TASS/ Interpress/ Andrey Pronin
What liability is provided for beating a prisoner?
- If a prison officer beats a prisoner, the former will not bear responsibility in the case where the use of physical force, special means or weapons was carried out on the grounds and in the manner established by the current legislation and is recognized as lawful.
- If a police officer exceeds his authority in the use of physical force, special means or weapons, responsibility is established in the legislation of the Russian Federation.
- The beating of a zone employee by a convicted person is regulated by Article 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and indicates liability for damage caused to the employee.
- If a criminal commits violent acts without causing a threat to health and life, or only threats to cause them, he may be subject to a fine, arrest for up to six months, forced labor for 5 years or imprisonment for the same period in accordance with Part 1 of Art. .318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
During the consideration of the case, it is fundamental to determine the relationship between the reasons for the action and the consequences.
Does it depend on the severity of the beating?
Liability for personal injury directly depends on the severity of the beatings inflicted. Thus, the damage caused is divided into four degrees, for each of which the punishment for the culprit will be determined.
- Without significant harm to health. The crime is considered as battery in accordance with Article 116. The degree of guilt will increase if the act committed by the employee came from hooligan motives or incites racial, ideological or national hatred.
- Slight harm to health. Considered under Article 115. The culprit may face a fine, compulsory labor or arrest.
- Harm to health of moderate severity (Article 112). The culprit faces imprisonment (or an increase in the existing term) or forced labor for up to three years.
- Serious harm to health (Article 111). The perpetrator faces imprisonment for up to 8 years (or an increase in the existing punishment).
