It’s been nearly a month since the human rights project Gulagu.net published a series of explosive video clips showing inmate abuse and torture in Russian prisons. These videos are part of a massive “archive” leaked by whistleblower Sergey Savelyev — a former inmate who secretly collected the footage while serving a nine-year prison sentence for illegal narcotics trafficking. Fearing reprisals, Savelyev fled Russia in mid-October. He’s now in France, where he hopes to be granted political asylum. But on Oct. 23, Russian police put Savelyev on a wanted list and arrested him in absentia. In an interview with Meduza conducted that same day, Sergey Savelyev talked about his time in prison in Russia, revealing himself as a whistleblower, and how the Russian authorities are still going after him.
