Russian Commitments to Investigate Torture in its Prisons Leaves UN Experts Unconvinced
July 30, 2018
Against the backdrop of a recently published chilling video capturing uniformed guards in Russian prison holding down a naked, handcuffed prisoner, while beating his feet with police batons and fists as he begged them to stop, Russian officials have pledged to prosecute anyone in said incident — but human rights experts at the United Nations remain unconvinced that the regime’s official position on torture has changed.
Reports the New York Times:
“Russia’s deputy justice minister, Mikhail Galperin, told the United Nations Committee Against Torture on Thursday that Russian authorities had arrested five prison guards who are suspected of torturing a prisoner in a penal colony northeast of Moscow in June 2017, and dismissed 17 officials.
(…)
‘The severe punishment of those responsible regardless of rank and position’ will send a clear official signal that torture was unacceptable, Mr. Galperin said. He said the case also demonstrated the effectiveness of government efforts to install video cameras in prisons and interrogation rooms.
‘Well, actually it doesn’t,’ Jens Modvig, the committee’s chairman, retorted.
It was a friend of one of the guards, not the authorities, who had handed over the video to the inmate’s lawyer, Mr. Modvig pointed out, and faced with evidence of abuse, the authorities were supposed to act immediately. ‘That didn’t happen so I disagree that it shows any kind of effectiveness,’ he added.”
According to the New York Times, the committee, citing various cases of abuse, repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with Russia’s treatment of prisoners during a two-day hearing at the United Nations human rights office in Geneva, but attempts to press Russian representatives to provide “details of the legal action taken by the Russian authorities against officials implicated in cases involving the use of torture,” went unanswered, leading the committee chairman Jens Modvig to conclude “that the Russian Federation is unable to explain how it prosecutes torture. This is simply not good enough.”
To read the full piece, click here.
In their criticism for the Russian regime, international observers also continue to point to the treatment of Alexey Pichugin, who “has repeatedly been brought to facilities operated by the FSB, successor to the KGB, where he was drugged and interrogated outside the presence of his lawyers.” Most recently, Irwin Cotler, Former Minister of Justice of Canada, David Libai, Former Minister of Justice of Israel, and Herta Däubler-Gmelin, former Minister of Justice of Germany, called on human rights organization Amnesty International to recognize Mr. Pichugin as a “political prisoner” and “prisoner of conscience” via an advertisement in the United Kingdom’s daily newspaper The Guardian.
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