Wednesday’s roundtable was held under the title “Medical Aspects of the Use of Torture.” During the course of discussion, experts gave various accounts of how torture in the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service and the Internal Ministry, which controls the police, had developed into a social norm that the government is not interested in addressing.

Public Council member Andrei Babushkin addressed how torture was employed specifically within the police, arguing that young people who decide to work in law enforcement often get the impression that the results they desire from detainees are fully achievable by simply using their fists.

Andrei Mayakov, deputy chairman of the Committee for Civil Rights, brought attention to the established practice in pretrial detention facilities where detainees are intentionally denied medical treatment for any injuries they might have. Moreover, medical professionals working in these facilities often fail to report instances when they suspect torture is being used against a detainee, he said.

Whereas the use of torture is punishable in many European countries by a significant prison term – up to a life sentence in Great Britain, for example – its maximum term under the Russian Criminal Code is seven years in prison, the experts noted.

Public Council Representative and Moscow Public Oversight Commission head Valery Borshchev noted that human rights advocates had begun to carry out cell-by-cell inspections of detainees located in pretrial detention facilities after the deaths of businesswoman Vera Trifonova and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, both of whom died this past year in the Moscow pretrial detention facility Matrosskaya Tishina.

Borshchev proposed that a special registry be set up in Moscow’s law enforcement agencies to record the circumstances of how cases of torture were allowed to occur.

“We cannot exterminate this evil, but it is possible to reduce it and make it so that torture ceases to be a norm,” said Borshchev.

Russia has been accused of using torture by a variety of international rights advocacy groups. A report in January by the United Nations blamed Russia for holding detainees in secret prisons that are meant to cover up the fact that torture or other ill-treatment is practiced in such facilities. Amnesty International has accused Russian law enforcement agencies of using torture both in the North Caucasus and throughout the rest of the country. Opposition activists and human rights advocates routinely report cases of torture by the police, and the Russian Internal Ministry itself has admitted that torture is used on a regular basis.

Vladimir Markin, official representative of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General of Russia, said that investigator Sergei Pysin has been charged with neglect of duty. If convicted, he faces up to five years in jail.

Trifonova, who suffered from diabetes and chronic kidney failure, died of heart failure in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention facility last Friday. The businesswoman had been detained since December 2009, when she was arrested on suspicion of massive fraud. Her lawyer alleges that Trifonova was intentionally denied medical care so that she would die, immediately giving rise to comparisons in the Russian press to the case of Hermitage Capital Management lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The lawyer died last November, also in Matrosskaya Tishina, and also allegedly due to intentionally denied medical care. Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officials admitted partial responsibility in that case.

After Magnitsky’s death, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev had ordered massive layoffs from FSIN. Among those, says FSIN head Aleksandr Reymer, was supposed to have been Matrosskaya Tishina manager Fikret Tagiev. The newspaper Vedomosti reported on Tuesday, however, that Tagiev remains in charge of the facility to this day. FSIN officials in Moscow did not confirm whether or not this was the case.

President Medvedev ordered a federal investigation into Trifonova’s death on Saturday. In the meantime, at least two people have been fired in connection with the incident – Deputy Manager Aleksandr Filippov at Moscow’s regional investigative agency (and one of Pysin’s supervisors) and Valery Ivarlak, who also worked at the agency.

Trifonova’s lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov, told the newspaper Gazeta that charging Pysin with negligence would sidestep his actual crime.

“I’m going to insist that it wasn’t negligence; there was clearly a direct intent here,” said the lawyer. In an earlier statement to the advocacy group Justice, Zherebenkov detailed how Pysin removed Trifonova from a Moscow hospital against doctors’ orders and sent her to a hospital 75 kilometers outside of Moscow that lacked the equipment she needed to survive. “I’m going to demand that he be charged with abuse; he knew perfectly well where he was sending her, and he should answer to the fullest extent,” he told Gazeta.

Zherebenkov said that he plans to have the proper documentation prepared by next Tuesday to request that Pysin be charged with abuse of his official authority – an offense punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Also on Tuesday, a group of prominent human rights advocates from the Russian Association of Independent Observers addressed a letter to President Medvedev demanding that those responsible for Trifonova’s death be brought to justice. The signatories included Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Andrei Babushkin, Valery Borshchev, Lev Ponomarev, and Aleksandr Goncharenko.

Speaking to the online news site Kasparov.ru, Borshchev lamented that “practically nothing serious was done after Magnitsky’s death. This allowed the situation to happen again.” He added that there was more blame to go around than just on Investigator Pysin. Odintsovsky City Court Judge Olga Makarova, for one, had stated publically that she wouldn’t grant Trifonova’s bail request unless she plead guilty.

The letter also includes a list of illnesses and asks the president to authorize a ban on allowing anyone suffering from them to be held in a pretrial detention facility. Right now, the list only applies to convicted criminals.

The book’s author, human rights activist Andrei Babushkin, explained that the publication discusses the legal responsibilities of militsiya officers when they are detaining suspects. Four thousand copies have been made in the first print run.

“In the book, an emphasis is made that before a court decision, every person has the presumption of innocence and all their civil liberties and legal rights,” Babushkin said. The human rights advocate added that the decision on whether to disseminate his brochure among officers was in the hands of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“We are constantly in close contact, and are working with the law enforcement agencies. Human rights activists in the capital regularly lead raids together with the militsiya in order to expose violations on the part of law enforcement officials,” the author added.

Earlier, the Committee for Civil Rights, led by Andrei Babushkin, took on the defense of the rights of militsiya officers. “Through our efforts, we lifted a prohibition against a personal lunchroom for members of the militsiya, and the air conditioners were repaired,” he noted. Participants in the “Experience of the collaboration between human rights organizations and police agencies of Moscow and the Moscow Oblast,” noted that thanks to the productive work of human rights advocates, the level of public trust in the militsiya has noticeably increased.