Perhaps the guards were interested in bullying the patients of the prison hospital
Members of the Presidential Human Rights Council suggested checking the law enforcement agencies of the Saratov Region for involvement in torture in a prison hospital. Earlier, the Saratov police opened a criminal case against Sergei Savelyev, who took out a video archive with recordings of torture in the local tuberculosis prison hospital OTB No. 1.
Photo: Dmitry Katorzhnov
As you know, it was thanks to Savelyev that several criminal cases were initiated, the names of some convicted activists who tortured and raped other prisoners became known. He also published the names of employees of the Saratov UFSIN, with what approval or even by whose order all these horrors were created.
Logically, Savelyev will have to be interviewed by the Russian investigative authorities (by the way, he himself is ready to testify). For making public the facts of torture, that is, in fact, for helping to expose the criminal community, he could have been, if not rewarded, then simply thanked. Human rights activists think so. The security forces have their own logic:Saveliev had to come with this video archive to the competent authorities, and only if they did not react, then act further at their discretion. But, first of all, it is not a fact that he would even get a personal appointment with someone from the leadership of law enforcement agencies. Secondly, he probably would not have been given any security guarantees.
This was confirmed by further events: the initiation of a case against Savelyev himself under Article 272 of the Criminal Code “Unlawful access to computer information”. The Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Saratov region essentially called the publication of the facts of torture a crime.
– We expected that sooner or later the true interests of these tortures would appear, – says Andrei Babushkin, a member of the HRC. – And so the police opened a case on… Savelieva! There is reason to believe that it was at the request of the police that statements were extracted from the convicts under the threat of torture and rape.
– We will ask the Investigative Committee to check those officials who initiated the case against Saveliev for involvement in what happened in the OTB, – says Eva Merkacheva, a member of the HRC. – What if among the victims of tormentors there are persons who have already been convicted or are now suspected of crimes, criminal cases on which these policemen have opened? This will explain a lot. It is by initiating a case onSavelieva, the police could have tried to evade responsibility themselves. In general, we will insist that all the confessions, all the witness statements of the convicts, given during their stay in the OTB and after “treatment” in this hospital, be recognized as illegal.
An appeal signed by two members of the HRC was sent to the head of the IC Alexander Bastrykin, who took the case of torture in Saratov under personal control.