You're reading: Reuters: UN – Russia must rein in torture, prosecute prison guards

Reuters: UN – Russia must rein in torture, prosecute prison guards

Published Aug. 10, 2018 at 3:09 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 must halt frequent torture of detainees and prosecute perpetrators, including prison guards caught on video beating an inmate that led to a public outcry, United Nations human rights investigators said on August 10.

The U.N. Committee against Torture, in a rare move, told Russian authorities to report back in a year on the emblematic case of guards beating Yevgeny Makarov with truncheons and on harassment of activists and journalists.