You're reading: Reuters: Russia says torture banned, will prosecute guards caught on video

Reuters: Russia says torture banned, will prosecute guards caught on video

Published July 26, 2018 at 8:28 pm

A man holds a placard reading "Stop torture, Freedom for Dadin" as he pickets Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service headquarters in Moscow on November 1, 2016.A Russian activist jailed for staging solo anti-government protests claimed in a letter published on November 1 that he was beaten and threatened with rape and murder in prison. Ildar Dadin, a 34-year-old activist serving a two-and-a-half year sentence at a prison in Russia's northwestern region of Karelia, was the first person to be imprisoned under a new law that punishes repeated participation in unsanctioned rallies with jail time. In a letter to his wife published on Meduza, an independent Russian news portal based in Latvia, Dadin said that on the second day of his detention in September, the prison governor and three other employees came to his cell and began beating him.

Photo by AFP

Russia will prosecute perpetrators of torture in its prisons, including guards caught on video beating an inmate that has led to a public outcry, the deputy justice minister told the United Nations human rights watchdog on July 26.

Authorities detained six prison guards on July 23, days after a video circulated online showing at least 10 guards torturing and beating an inmate with truncheons.