Not much is known about the circumstances of the prisoners’ deaths. According to one of the colony officers on duty, who observed the hostage-taking events through video surveillance cameras, four “vacationers” were kept in a separate room. It was decided to name them that way after what happened in the colony. 
At the height of the emergency, one of the attackers of the colony administration employees, named Toshev, came to visit the “vacationers.” Judging by the way the four listened to the terrorist, a version arose that they could have been asked to play along and sit on the parade ground with their hands tied as extras. And then, at the time of the assault, they were all killed.
As for the status of those killed, theoretically they could have been “vacationers”: such a concept is actually enshrined in the penal code. However, in practice, criminals from a maximum security penal colony are almost never allowed to go home. And even more so, no one was going to immediately send the four convicts on civilian leave. Simply, in this way it was decided to preserve their almost powerless status as prisoners. And the contracts signed with the Ministry of Defense were simply “nullified”, because no copies were given to the prisoners.
That is why neither the FSIN nor the Investigative Committee commented on the hot pursuit of the death of the four convicts. And their relatives received terse telegrams (precisely from the Federal Penitentiary Service) about their death in the colony.
But one of those killed, Sergei Bashkatov, shortly before the incident, wrote in a letter “to freedom” that he had already signed a contract and his candidacy was approved by representatives of the Ministry of Defense. Which confirms the fact that the security forces and the military hid in order to be held accountable not for the murder of contract soldiers, but for the death of ordinary prisoners.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
