Relatives of the detainees have been gathering outside the Sakharovo detention facilities to hand over care packages for their family members
Credit: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA
Russian protesters have complained of inhumane conditions at Moscow’s detention centres, which are overflowing after police arrested 3,000 people who took to the streets in support of a jailed opposition leader.
Russian cities have been gripped by nationwide protests after Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader, was arrested upon last month after returning to the country from Germany, where he was recovering from an attempted assassination.
Photographs and videos posted online by several inmates showed a cell at one detention centre crowded with two dozen men sitting on bare metal bunk beds, struggling to find any space to lie down.
One of the inmates seen in the photos is Sergei Smirnov, editor-in-chief of the popular news website Media Zona, who was sentenced to 25 days in custody on Wednesday for retweeting a joke about himself.
Police claimed that the retweet was tantamount to incitement to taking part in authorised protests in Mr Navalny’s support.
As all of Moscow’s detention facilities filled up, Mr Smirnov and other inmates were taken to a centre for illegal migrants in the suburbs.
Media Zona on Thursday quoted Mr Smirnov as saying that his van with two dozen people had to wait outside the detention facility for three hours as the officers were apparently struggling to process the prisoners. He said there were seven police vans waiting to get in.
“All the men from our van were taken into one cell: 28 people for four bunk beds,” he was quoted as saying.
“This is all clearly due to a staggering lack of jail space.”
Detainees who still had their phones tweeted from the police vans late on Wednesday, saying that they had to spend hours in the unheated vans to be delivered to their detention centres.
Maria Silyantyeva, a photographer from Moscow, on Thursday posted a video on Instagram, showing nearly two dozen women in an all-female cell with a table and several bunk beds without any mattresses or sheets.
The toilet, a hole in the floor, was seen near the beds, separated from the rest of the space by a low partition.
By Thursday afternoon, Mr Smirnov and some of his cellmates were taken to a new cell where each had their own bed, he told Media Zona, adding that he was promised a shower and a walk soon.
Nearly 3,000 people have been detained in Moscow since Sunday
Credit: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP
More than 10,000 people have been detained across Russia since January 23 when tens of thousands took to the streets to protest Mr Navalny’s arrest on arrival from Germany where he had been recovering from a near-fatal poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
More than 1,100 people were detained in Moscow on Tuesday after a Moscow court sentenced Mr Navalny to nearly three years in prison for violating the terms of his probation.
Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny’s key adviser who lives in self-imposed exile, on Thursday described the recent arrests as “the biggest wave of political terror in our country since Stalin’s times.”
Asked about overwhelming reports of inhumane conditions in custody, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday: “There are no repressions. These are police measures against those who take part in illegal gatherings.”
Mr Peskov admitted that detention centres are running out of space but he described it as “the consequence of people taking part in illegal gatherings.”
Most of Mr Navalny’s allies in Russia are now in custody or under house arrest.
Prosecutors on Thursday brought charges against his close associate Lyubov Sobol and his brother, Oleg.
They face up to years in prison if convicted of incitement to break coronavirus restrictions over the street protests last month.
Ms Sobol, who is under house arrest, was taken to the court on Wednesday where she fined £10 for resisting police when she was detained at a Moscow airport where she was waiting for Mr Navalny to fly in from Germany.
Свежие комментарии