According to Valery Borshchev, a representative of the Moscow Public Observation Committee (ONK), “the UN committee is interested in this information. Questions regarding Razvozzhayev are going to be given to the official Russian delegation as soon as November 12.”

Borshchev noted in particular that the committee had been informed of physical and psychological torture confirmed by the ONK after visiting Razvozzhayev in Moscow’s Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.

The activist, who is accused by the Russian government of organizing mass riots, says he made a false confession after being tortured for two days and told his children would be killed if he failed to comply.

In what quickly became an international scandal, Razvozzhayev was kidnapped in Ukraine last month after seeking political asylum and sent back to Moscow in a private plane. The identity of the kidnappers is unclear. On October 22, Moscow’s Basmanny Court sentenced him to two months in Lefortovo. His lawyers were not allowed to attend his court session.

The kidnapping came following a heavily criticized film aired on state-controlled television channel NTV called “Anatomy of a Protest 2.” The film accuses Razvozzhayev and two other prominent opposition activists of colluding with a Georgian parliamentarian to change Russia’s state leadership.

A group of prominent Russian human rights advocates have penned a letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on the subject, asking him to take immediate action to put an end to the widespread use of torture in Russia’s detention facilities.

To the President of the Russian Federation
D.A. Medvedev

Message from members of public hearings dedicated to the problem of torture within law enforcement agencies and the penitentiary system

Respected Dmitri Anatolevich!

The prevalence of torture, physical and psychological, that happens in our country during both inquiries and investigations and also during detention has taken on a scale characteristic of a totalitarian society.

Medieval in nature, torture is used far and wide to obtain self-incriminating statements and statements incriminating others as well as for morally suppressing prisoners. Regardless of the changes in law and all reforms in law enforcement agencies, the practice of torture has been preserved and is even expanding.

We consider the current situation to be absolutely intolerable and feel that it demands joint action from both the state and civil society.

We are pinning our hopes on you, since it is precisely you who has repeatedly proclaimed that observing the principle of the supremacy of law is important and is the main guarantor of constitutional human rights and freedoms in our country.

We call upon you to issue a legislative initiative to change the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation so that it would preserve the testimony of accused persons given during preliminary investigations only in the case that it is later confirmed by the defendant in court. This would render the use of torture and forced testimony during inquiries and investigations pointless.

In addition, we call upon you to initiate changes to strip prison administrations of any motivation to use unlawful pressure against people in detention. With this goal in mind, limits on the actions of penal system operational staff should be introduced into the Penal Code of the Russian Federation. They should not have the authority to engage in illegal activities that are committed by persons outside of the given place of detention or which go beyond the punishment that the prisoner has been sentenced to. In this way, operatives will only work to prevent and put a stop to violations of the law that are planned or committed in these places of detention.

We call upon you to create a joint public and state commission to investigate incidents of torture and cruel and degrading treatment.

Such a commission should be created with the participation of representatives of state agencies and also the Presidential Council on the Development of Society and Human Rights, the Public Chamber of the RF, the Human Rights Ombudsman of the RF, a specialized committee of the State Duma of the RF, and specialized human rights organizations.

We members of the organizational committee for public hearings dedicated to the problem of torture in law enforcement agencies and the penitentiary system also feel it is very important to take part in the work of such a commission.

We are certain that, without your immediate interference, the problem of the expansion of the use of torture will definitively destroy the prestige of Russian justice and will undermind the faith of the Russian people in the law.

Hearing Organizational Committee:

L.M. Alexeyeva, representative of the Moscow Helsinki Group, representative of the head of the foundation In Defense of the Rights of Prisoners
V.V. Borshchev, member of the Moscow Helsinki Group
S.A. Kovalev, president of the Institute of Human Rights
L.A. Ponomarev, leader of For Human Rights
S.V. Belyak, lawyer
D.N. Dmitriev, lawyer

February 21, 2011
A.D. Sakharov Museum & Public Center

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.