‘The pressure begins the moment you arrive in the zone’

Inmates of IR-6 in the Chelyabinsk region are complaining about torture and extortion by the staff of the correctional facility. They claim that an inmate was beaten to death in the colony while money was being demanded from him. Witnesses who openly declared the murder are now being beaten and forced to retract their words, claim human rights activists and the relatives of the convicts. In the Chelyabinsk Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), the accusations are categorically rejected, and the colony administration intends to sue the complainants.

In the Chelyabinsk region, a former inmate, Mikhail Yermuraki, has complained about bullying and torture by staff at the correctional colony No. 6 located in Kopeysk. This statement followed a video appeal by Yevgeny Khomichev, an inmate from IR-10, located in the same region. Yermuraki, like Khomichev, recorded a video appeal which was posted on 3 August on the website of the human rights project Gulagu.net. Over the weekend, Yermuraki, who served 13 years for preparing a robbery and murder, explained the essence of his claims to a correspondent from Gazeta.Ru.

‘For all the time I was in the colony, I observed how the administration of the facility, through the efforts of rank-and-file staff and inmates close to them, engages in extorting money from convicts. If they refuse, the inmates are beaten,’ stated Mikhail Yermuraki.

According to the former inmate, the illegal activities of subordinates are controlled from the administration side by the colony head, Denis Mekhanov, and from the convict side by the former Deputy Governor of the Chelyabinsk region, Viktor Timashov, who was convicted of bribery for 10 years and has already served half his term in IR-6.

Inmates close to the administration, who enjoy preferential treatment in the colony for their cooperation, are called ‘Sdiptsy’ by the inmates — a derivative of the abbreviation SDiP, which stands for ‘Section of Discipline and Order’. Two years ago, SDiPs as a special penitentiary institution, through which the FSIN leadership tried to control the situation in colonies and monitor discipline, were banned. The corresponding order for the liquidation of SDiPs was signed by the then-director of FSIN, Alexander Reimer — in doing so, he met the demands of human rights activists and inmates who had protested for many years against the sections as sources of illegal pressure.


But as Yermuraki claims, in reality, SDiPs continue to exist: he cites IR-6 in Kopeysk as an example.


The ‘Sdiptsy’, according to him, freely possess mobile phones, are granted visits with relatives and even prostitutes upon request, and move freely around the colony territory — they can even perform the functions of colony staff, for example, receiving newly arrived inmates.

‘There are about fifty inmates close to the administration in the colony. The pressure begins the moment you arrive in the zone. At first, they try to probe you — to see how creditworthy you are,’ Yermuraki recounts. ‘They find out who your mother, father, wife, brother, grandfather, grandmother are, what they do, whether you have a business on the outside, and they act based on the information obtained. They say: “You have 13 years to serve, think about how you will live: for example, the offices of the colony staff need repairs.”’

In order for an inmate to agree to cooperate, Yermuraki explains, they are promised a positive character reference and an absence of problems with the provision of parole.


‘But things with parole are not simple either: you can pay several times and still not get it. At first, they tell you that you need to give, for example, 50 thousand roubles, and when the deadline for submitting documents to the court approaches, they suddenly, as if nothing happened, make it clear that you need to pay more. This can go on infinitely, and you can pay constantly if you have the means,’ explains the former IR-6 inmate.


If a convict refuses to pay, they are threatened at first, and ‘then they get to work,’ Yermuraki continues: they beat them, send them to a punishment cell (SHIZO) on trumped-up charges, where the beatings continue: ‘There are people in the colony who have been stuck in the SHIZO for a year and a half. There, you are one-on-one with the staff, and they can do anything they want to you.’

Those who ‘do not break’ and find the strength to complain about torture to human rights activists or law enforcement agencies are beaten even harder, Yermuraki claims. If traditional means of persuasion do not work, the inmate is threatened with humiliation. ‘They bring a homosexual over and say that if you do not withdraw your complaints and sign the appropriate paper, you will be raped,’ the former inmate says. ‘Very many, one could even say the absolute majority, withdraw their complaints. At the same time, they film everything on video, so that later, in case of an inspection, they can present evidence.’

Convicts who are subjected to pressure have nothing to oppose the ‘Sdiptsy’ with: if, for example, during a fight, one of the ‘privileged’ inmates suffers, the colony administration can open a criminal case under Article 321 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (disorganisation of the activities of institutions ensuring isolation from society), which carries a penalty of up to five years of imprisonment.

Violence can result in a lethal outcome, Yermuraki says. As an example, he cites the story of inmate Nikolai Korovkin, who, according to the former prisoner, did not survive the beatings and died in early June 2012. Witnesses to the beating of Korovkin, who made the incident public, were subsequently beaten themselves — they are still being intimidated, the head of Gulagu.net, Vladimir Osechkin, told Gazeta.Ru. ‘We are talking about convicts Daniil Abakumov and Oleg Loktionov. Both of them are serving their sentences in IR-6. Both Abakumov and Loktionov openly stated that money was extorted from Korovkin, who was systematically beaten. In the end, the inmate died, and the witnesses began to have problems,’ the human rights activist noted.


Representatives of the Public Monitoring Commission for places of detention in the Chelyabinsk region confirm Osechkin's words.


‘On 19 June, we were at medical-preventive institution No. 3, where Korovkin was, and wanted to meet with him. But we were told that he had died — supposedly because he had HIV,’ Dina Latypova, a member of the Public Monitoring Commission for places of detention in the Chelyabinsk region, told Gazeta.Ru. ‘The next day, I, together with another PMC member, Valeria Prikhodkina, arrived at Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 3. There, we recorded Abakumov’s statement on video, in which he asserts that he witnessed Korovkin’s murder: Korovkin, according to Abakumov, was severely beaten with truncheons,’ Latypova recounts.

A few days later, she and Prikhodkina wrote a statement to the regional departments of the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office with a demand to conduct an inspection in IR-6. According to Latypova, the activists waited a month for a response but never received one. Then they wrote new complaints, but did not even get a formal dismissal.

‘In addition to Abakumov’s testimony, we had in our hands the statement of a former inmate, Yanushevsky, who said the same thing as Abakumov. The next time we were able to speak with Abakumov was only on 3 August. By this moment, he had already been transferred back to the colony. There, according to him, he was constantly beaten and demanded to retract his words. Also, Abakumov claims he was raped with an object, while they demanded he refuse his lawyer. The latter demand was explained by the fact that the lawyer was allegedly paid for by Prikhodkina, who, in turn, is funded from abroad,’ claims Latypova.

In parallel, the Kopeysk Investigative Committee department opened a criminal case against Abakumov, who had already served 11 years, under Article 306 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (knowingly false denunciation). ‘I learned about this from the investigator, who recently summoned me for interrogation. At first, I thought they would be speaking with me about our statement, but in the end, it turned out that I am acting as a witness in the case against Abakumov,’ Latypova is surprised. Now, according to her, Abakumov is very depressed. The inmate’s mother, Alla Abakumova, is seriously fearing for her son’s life. ‘It is very difficult for him. His term of imprisonment is already coming to an end, but I am afraid that they simply will not let him be released. He has complained to me many times about beatings: it is unlikely they will end, and unlikely they will forgive him for what he said,’ Abakumova expressed her fear.


Besides Abakumov, another IR-6 inmate, Oleg Loktionov, is seriously fearing for his life.


He also maintains that the convict Korovkin died having not survived the administration’s beatings, and intends to openly defend his point of view. Over the weekend, an audio recording of Loktionov’s conversation with Mikhail Yermuraki was posted on Gulagu.net. According to Loktionov, Korovkin told him that the colony staff were extorting money from him, in particular, the head of the IR-6 security department, Konstantin Shchegol.

‘This is their job: every day they summon someone, beat them, extort money. Shchegol hit this Korovkin on the head with a rubber truncheon, causing him to fall and lose consciousness. He got worse, and he was taken to medical-preventive institution No. 3 (LPU), where he died,’ Loktionov says on the recording. He was not present at the meeting between Shchegol and Korovkin, and refers exclusively to the latter’s story.

At the same time, Loktionov himself says he ended up in LPU-3 after he was beaten: as he claims, he was beaten by the deputy head of the colony for security and operational work, Yevgeny Zyakhor. In a conversation with Gazeta.Ru, Loktionov noted that after the beating, they did not want to send him to the hospital for a long time, but eventually agreed when the inmate’s condition worsened. At first, nobody touched him in LPU-3: they performed surgery on his leg and continued treatment. But after the audio recording appeared on Gulagu.net, Loktionov was informed that on Monday he must urgently return to IR-6. ‘He is in real danger there — after what he told,’ Mikhail Yermuraki is certain.


‘My son told me that Zyakhor beat him. He did not say anything about extortion — apparently, he was protecting me, knowing I have heart problems,’ the inmate’s mother, Svetlana Loktionova, told Gazeta.Ru.


They started beating him when he began to complain about the court decision on his criminal case (Loktionov was convicted of murder for 22 years in a strict-regime colony), she says.

‘Then he started complaining about the administration, and they began beating him systematically. In 2011, there was a moment when my son decided to declare a hunger strike. I told him then: “Wait,” and went to the colony head, Denis Mekhanov. He told me he had settled everything amicably, but in November 2011, my son was beaten again, and he started complaining again. And then there was this story about Korovkin…’ says Svetlana Loktionova.

Loktionov, Abakumov, and Yermuraki are not the only inmates who claim constant beatings and extortion by the IR-6 administration. Convicts Artem Dmitrievsky, Ruslan Latypov, Denis Lyubistok, Vitaly Kortashov, Andrei Zhmaev, Sergey Rychkov, Maxim Krasnobaev, Anton Nechaev, Semyon Truskov, Andrei Fomin, and Vianor Dumava are also complaining about the staff’s actions. The relatives of some of them have already written a collective letter to the President’s administration, in which they ask to stop the lawlessness being perpetrated by IR-6 staff.

Gazeta.Ru was unable to speak with the colony head, Denis Mekhanov. In the correctional facility, they refused to provide comments ‘by phone’ and advised contacting the press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service (UFSIN) for the Chelyabinsk region. In the regional UFSIN, the accusations against IR-6 are categorically rejected.

‘Regarding the fact of Korovkin’s death, the regional prosecutor’s office conducted an inspection, which revealed that the convict died of a disease — HIV,’ the acting head of the agency’s press service, Olga Yemelyanova, told Gazeta.Ru. Loktionov’s statements, according to her, will be challenged in court. ‘In the near future, a statement on the opening of a criminal case against Loktionov will be filed,’ Yemelyanova noted, without explaining under which article. The representative of the regional UFSIN is convinced that the inmates’ statements point to a targeted campaign to discredit IR-6.


An inspection is currently being conducted regarding Mikhail Yermuraki’s statement.


The Investigative Committee for the Chelyabinsk region is, nevertheless, conducting its own inspection of the information that Loktionov disseminated.

Vladimir Osechkin, by contrast, is certain that the situation in IR-6 and other Chelyabinsk colonies points to the collapse of the penitentiary system in the region. ‘Those who professionally deal with the problems of Russian prisons are aware of a number of regions where inmates’ rights are violated regularly. This concerns the Chelyabinsk UFSIN, which could not correct the situation even after the high-profile case of the ‘torture chamber’ in the Kopeysk IR-1. A regime of silence is created where corruption and extorting inmates thrive. In colonies where the leadership works according to the law, inmates boldly write complaints and appeal the administration’s decisions. But where one could get their teeth knocked out or be severely beaten just for a complaint, convicts do not even think about using legal remedies for self-preservation,’ Osechkin noted to Gazeta.Ru.

Read in full: http://www.gazeta.ru/social/2012/08/06/4713849.shtml