Video of the day: tortures in Russian prisons can no longer be attributed to the sadism of individual employees

For several weeks now, the Russian prison system has been shaken by one of the loudest scandals in decades. It began with the publication of fragments of a huge video archive of torture of prisoners in the Saratov prison hospital. All this time, the identity of the person who collected the torture video remained unknown. But on Sunday, the Belarusian programmer Sergey Savelyev asked for asylum in France, it was he who gave human rights defenders from a human rights organization a video archive of torture in Russian prisons, after the publication of which the Investigative Committee announced the initiation of criminal cases, a number of FSIN officers resigned.

The BBC took Sergey Savelyev interview in which he talked about how his hands were terrible testimonies of torture and how he managed to escape from Russia.

He is 31 years old, eight years ago he ended up in a Russian prison - first in Krasnodar and then in the Saratov region. Having gained access to the filming of video recorders that are required to be worn by FSIN officers, for three years he collected evidence of monstrous bullying and rape of prisoners in order to eventually pass it on to human rights defenders.

Interestingly, Savelyev has already been in the hands of Russian law enforcement agencies, and talked about how this happened:

“They immediately confronted me with the fact - you, they say, sit in any case now. For what you did, you sit down. And taking into account what you were doing - you disseminated incriminating information about the FSIN, they will kill you there. Either you will fall from the bed from the second tier, or you will hang yourself in the cell. They'll find you hanged. Before that, you will tell us everything, and when it is no longer necessary, then... That is, this threat is quite real, this very often happens in fact..."

Savelyev's interview caused a massive reaction on Russian social networks; it is not every day that it is possible to safely escape from the exposed sadists. The story of the escape itself reads like a real thriller. This interview also caused several questions, the main of which was this: why did the FSIN officers need to film their crimes on camera? Isn't that idiocy? Lawyer Alexey Fedyarov professionally clarified this issue:

"At first. They are recording it because there are video recorders.

Everything is simple here.

Secondly. To enter the service in some structures, a certificate stating that you are a fool is not needed for the very reason that you are entering the service in these structures.

Nothing complicated either..."

Journalist Vladimir Demchikov noted several important points.

1. I did not know that torture and rape were carried out as "special measures" (to punish specific prisoners) and therefore were carefully recorded on good and fully charged video recorders - then this was passed on to the authorities for reporting that the event was carried out. That is, it cannot be attributed to the kurtosis of the performer, it is an organized torture machine.
2. His story is very interesting, how he "left" from the care of our security officials, who almost grabbed him, how he left Russia for Belarus and then got to France, cool guy, I love that.
3. Well done, he didn’t tell how exactly he managed to get the disc with information out of the prison, he just told how, in principle, he prepared it, I respect. The guy did an important thing..."

The journalist Tatyana May made important generalizations based on the interviews:

“And I wondered how this guy, Sergey Savelyev, managed to collect so many videos of torture in Russian prisons. Who filmed it. It turned out - for reporting. That is, before they simply suspected, but now everyone knows that torture is not a consequence of the fact that maniacs and sadists are somehow arranged to work in prison. This is what the system requires.

Not some degenerate Lapa rapes a mutilated prisoner, but, in fact, personally, himself, his groomed member - the director of the FSIN, or whatever he is called.

The state demands. Our state, calling for no one to forget that it was it that defeated fascism. A country where the word "Gestapo" was a terrible insult.

Powerful interview. The guy is amazing, of course. The only person in the history of the Russian colonies who has archived and exposed evidence of monstrous torture.

“Where did I get the strength? I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that it took me some incredible effort to make up my mind to continue doing this. I think that it just came by itself in the moment”.

A separate story is how he was able to get out of Russia, although he was already under the cover of the FSB. You can shoot a new Shawshank..."