"Not a system, but a state of emergency": the Federal Penitentiary Service is trying to absolve itself of responsibility for the torture conveyor

The opposite side in return cleans the uniforms as best they can. For example, they sent us a video of male organs.

Nina Gvozdeva

After the scandal with the exposure of the torture conveyor in the prison tuberculosis hospital near Saratov, loud resignations followed.

The head of the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Saratov Region, Colonel of the Internal Service Alexey Fedotov submitted his resignation letter on October 5. The next day, the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, Alexander Kalashnikov, dismissed his closest colleagues - the head of the FKU "OTB-1 (regional tuberculosis prison hospital - editor's note) of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Saratov Region" Colonel of the Internal Service Pavel Gatsenko, Deputy Chief for Security and Operations Colonel of the Internal Service Sergey Salov, Head of the Operations Department Major of the Internal Service Anton Bochkov and the head of the security department, Lieutenant Colonel of the Internal Service Sergei Maltsev. The court has already sent the latter to a pre-trial detention center for two months. Lieutenant General Alexander Kalashnikov himself did not stay at his post for long after the scandal. On November 25, President Vladimir Putin by decree dismissed him from the post of director of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation.

On the same day, the Ministry of Justice, in its written reply to Gulagu.net, announced the prosecution of 15 employees and the dismissal of two more employees of the central office of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation.

As the project "Gulagu.net" discloses the names of the FSIN officers who, in their opinion, approved the torture schemes, filmed the torture, documented and archived them, and then blackmailed the prisoners with them, criminal cases were opened. The Investigative Committee of Russia and the Prosecutor General's Office every week open proceedings against officials of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation under Art. 132 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Violent acts of a sexual nature committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy", Art. 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Exceeding official powers committed with the use of violence and the threat of its use". Everyone understands that the circle of the accused can be expanded at any time.

The same circle of people, apparently, is now organizing campaigns to clean up uniforms, guided by the fear of losing posts, epaulets, and even worse - to be investigated.

In general, they clean not only uniforms, but in the literal sense of the word - the floors in TLO-8 of the Regional Tuberculosis Hospital No. 1 of the Federal Penitentiary Service.

At the end of last week, information appeared that, having been warned about possible criminal cases, the head of OTB-1, Colonel Pavel Gatsenko (currently dismissed) ordered the convicts to cut down the concrete floor from their so-called. torture room and take the debris to the pigsty, smear them there with the waste products of pigs, and then take them out of the institution.

"Again. The management of OTB-1, in collusion with the FSIN Internal Security Service, deliberately destroyed evidence and at the end of September 2021, realizing the risks of initiating a series of criminal cases of torture in TLO-8, ordered the convicts to break the floors on which blood and feces of victims of torture and sperm and urine dripped "kapo" - rapists (kapo - «kameradschaft-polizei» - editor's note). These are concrete facts of obstruction of the official investigation by the FSIN Internal Security Service and the head of OTB-1, Colonel Pavel Gatsenko”, - users comment in “Gulagu.net ”.

At the same time, in spite of the process of de-anonymization of the Savelyev List, information campaigns were launched to discredit the activities of the Gulagu.net project itself.

Last week four videos of torture of prisoners, allegedly filmed in the colonies of the Ulyanovsk region, were sent to the editorial offices of the federal media, to human rights organizations, to administrators of popular publics.

The author of these letters appeared to be a certain S.N. Zavolokin. He explained that he allegedly had 10 GB of files (photos and videos) with torture and rape of prisoners in the institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. “Every day I receive all the information on torture from both employees and convicts. Currently, I am preparing material to be sent to foreign organizations and special services, ”he wrote. The informant attached a personal photo, a passport page with a photo, and consent to the processing of personal data to his messages. And four seed videos.

Apart from these short four videos, no one from Comrade. Zavolokina S.N. I have not seen or received any other materials.

The recordings show violent sexual acts between men in the uniform of Russian prisoners.

“The emergency was in the detachment's premises, in the room for storing personal belongings. The rape was committed by members of a group with a negative orientation”, - clarified SN Zavolokin.

The videos lack any significant details by which it would be possible to correlate the participants' belonging to any particular institution of the FSIN. But with a certain degree of certainty, one can judge that violent acts against prisoners are committed by other prisoners, that is, not by employees of correctional institutions. The actions themselves were filmed, apparently, on phone cameras, not on service recorders. Special means - handcuffs, truncheons are not used in the video.

One of the first videos "Zavolokina S.N." published on his Internet resource "GULAG-info". According to the founder of Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin , the clone site was created several years ago by Denis Soldatov, a former volunteer of Gulagu.net, specifically to mislead people.

“This person has never been a colleague. He came to our meeting of the working group 2 or 3 times, made a fake site and even introduced himself to people as a co-founder of Gulagu.net. It is being conducted by the special services. In the trumped-up case against me, he appears as a witness for the prosecution. But when he himself ended up in the pre-trial detention center, he called from there and told me that they were making him slander me. Well, and apparently for all these services rendered, he received the minimum term, which he served in a comfortable zone in Tula. And now, one must think, he is working out according to old memory”, - says Osechkin.

The point of throwing these videos with heart-rending naturalistic shots, with brutal violent scenes with shovels and frantic screams of adult men is to arrange everything in such a way as to create a false impression on the ignorant viewer. This is the zone. On it, they say, anything happens. In conditions of prolonged confinement, the usual sexual instinct is triggered. In extreme cases, it happens that, well, the convicts do not get along with each other because of some nonsense, and in this way they take revenge on each other. The role and responsibility of the administration of the colony and the curators outside of it are completely washed out of such a presentation of "content".

"Version is that convicts rape convicts and that's the point. The operatives are trying to distribute these videos, trying in this way to remove all questions about the involvement of the FSB and the Federal Penitentiary Service in the torture conveyors. The generals are now doing the same in their explanatory notes to the higher authorities - they are trying to present the terrible torture in OTB-1 not as a well-built and functioning system of torture, but as an accidental emergency. But this is a lie, and the opposite is proven by the facts. The torture in Saratov OTB-1 was filmed on the service video recorders of the Federal Penitentiary Service, and a number of the victims were immobilized with the help of inventoried special equipment - handcuffed hand and foot and were in a knowingly helpless position. This is all monstrous. But even more monstrous is the purpose for which these videos were filmed. And they were filmed for use by intelligence officers for operational purposes. The victims of these videos were then blackmailed, recruited, forced to cooperate with the operatives, threatening to transfer them to the caste of “humiliated” in case of refusal", - Vladimir Osechkin told “Novye Izvestia”.

The head of "Gulagu.Net" spoke in detail about the device of the torture conveyor in an interview with Ksenia Sobchak.

“Kapo (abbreviated from “kameradschaft-polizei”) were privileged prisoners in Nazi Germany, usually members of the auxiliary police in a concentration camp who collaborated with the Nazi administration.

Osechkin: The privileged caste among concentration camp prisoners was endowed with control and distribution functions in relation to other prisoners: they were allowed to beat them, rape them, kill them. In my opinion, our Federal Penitentiary Service has recreated this system.

At one time, it was decided to abandon torture of prisoners by the hands of employees, to minimize this, because this leads once - to the shame of the system, twice - to condemnation of the employees themselves. It was decided to use the so-called. secret agents.

Sobchak: What do kaps [in Russian prisons] get in return for these services?

Osechkin : The FSIN and FSB operatives are carefully analyzing the psychological portraits of [the prisoners]. It is easier for them not to mess with unbelievering people - to settle them separately, let them read books for themselves, do not climb anywhere. But there are a number of other psychotypes of people. As a rule, they are physically developed, while they have a very low moral-strong-willed bar, and they get into development.

First, they are caught on some small trifle, for example, they are asked in exchange for bringing home food or something like that, just to look after some so-called. economic prisoner, so that he is not offended by others. A confidential contact is established between the operative and the person in the cell, who from that moment considers himself an elder, who becomes an important figure, to whom a mobile phone can also be brought, through which delicious food and other benefits enter the cell. But gradually the operational tasks are becoming more and more explicit. The person is told: “You know, we’ll throw a killer and a rapist for you now. He killed, dismembered, but no one can find the head. And without a head there is no criminal case and it is simply impossible to bury a person. Could you talk to him? There are as many as four athletes for you here, for a healthy lifestyle, everything. Could you somehow teach this addict a lesson? Mom is crying, everyone is crying, everything.

Then the person thinks: “Yes indeed, what a bastard - he killed! We are all here for the economy, for extortion, for robbery, and he is for dismemberment! Accordingly, it is clear that this evening several athletes, at the request of an operative friend, are doing THIS [for the first time]. Then they come to him and thank him. Here's 40 kilograms of sushi and dumplings from your mom. You completed the task - high five. A person already feels like a hero, he will now have an asterisk, a medal will be hanged. And after a week the person is transferred to another building for another opera, or operas are changed in the same building. And a completely different conversation begins ...

In psychiatric, tuberculosis, AIDS clinics, there is even greater chaos, because the institutions are closed, access is limited for all checks, even the FSIN officers do not enter, everything you want is signed there. The system is very fine-tuned.