Georgy Ivanov about innovations in Lefortovo.
Lefortovo is a “special” detention center where those involved in the most high-profile cases are kept. Any norms there are interpreted as strictly as possible, and their application does not always look humane.
But they write that in Lefortovo it became possible to use emails. I immediately remember my colleague from the PMC, who was a member of the commission for two convocations. In 2016-19, he continuously gave Lefortovo recommendations to replace the monstrous toilet cabinets with walled toilets and install hot water.
The administration laughed every time and said that there would never be closed cabins or hot water in the cells in Lefortovo.
And what did I see in 2019, when I got to the PMC? They carried out renovations in Lefortovo and implemented all these recommendations. But there were no emails, about which the employees boasted of their strength: “You understand, we have a special isolation ward here. This will never happen here.”
Now all that remains (ha-ha) is to overcome the special love of the censors of this institution to send all correspondence to investigators for additional verification. Easy to say, but very difficult to do.
Of course, restricting correspondence and complete isolation is one of the types of illegal influence on a prisoner. In my practice, under far-fetched pretexts, even a three-line telegram of birthday greetings did not reach the recipients.
In addition to violating the right to respect for private and family life, under certain conditions such practices may also be considered torture.
Let’s say a person in a pre-trial detention center receives a letter about a serious illness of a relative. Having a plan to completely isolate the prisoner, the administration sends such a letter to the investigator. The investigator holds the letter, and at the next meeting hints at some bad event in the family, and leaves the person to think about his position in the criminal case for a couple of weeks.
Will the accused suffer in such a situation? Certainly. What is this if not psychological torture?
Team Against Torture
The channel reflects information about the activities of the Team Against Torture, launched by human rights activists in 2000, aimed at eradicating torture in Russia
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