Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta recently released footage of how Evgeny Makarov, a prisoner in Yaroslavl Colony No 1, was brutally tortured in June 2017. Source: Novaya Gazeta. Last month, a gruesome torture scandal broke out in Russia — one that finally means the authorities cannot continue to ignore the gravity of the problem.
On 20 July, Novaya Gazeta, a leading Russian independent newspaper, published a 10-minute video of penitentiary officials viciously beating a prisoner in a penal colony in Yaroslavl, 266 km from Moscow. The beating was clearly meant as a punishment for an inmate who not only misbehaved but, notably, had filed many complaints with the prison service about mistreatment.
The officials went about the beating in a businesslike manner, stretching their victim on a table and methodically hitting him with batons. The video, recorded with the body camera of one of the torturers over a year ago, was leaked to Irina Biryukova, a human rights lawyer with the Public Verdict Foundation, an independent group that assists torture victims. Biryukova shared the video with Novaya Gazeta after months of futile efforts to force the authorities to investigate.
