News March 11, 2019 Russia: allegations of torture in the Northern Caucasian region The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) has today issued a public statement on the Russian Federation urging the Russian authorities to take decisive action to eradicate the phenomenon of ill-treatment by law enforcement…
News January 7, 2019 Russia: prison guards suffer from 'moral fatigue,' officials says Amid a continuing debate about the dire conditions in Russian prisons and repeated cases of torture there, a top official from Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) says its workers are suffering from “moral fatigue” as a result of low wages and daily contacts with inmates who sometimes atta…
News December 24, 2018 Russia: le directeur d'une prison suspendu après des cas de travaux forcés This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the French version.
News December 17, 2018 Russia: notorious 19th-century Moscow prison will be closed Russian prison officials have announced plans to close the infamous Butyrka prison in central Moscow and relocate its inmates to the city’s outskirts.
News December 9, 2018 Russia: prison torture victim 'brought back to life four times' Former inmate Yevgeny Makarov describes how guards choked him with a towel and poured water into his mouth to suffocate him.
News December 7, 2018 Russia: inmates In far East launch hunger strike to protest prison conditions Eight inmates in Russia’s Far Eastern Sakha-Yakutia region have launched a hunger strike to protest conditions at the prison where they are being held, the head of a regional human monitoring group says.
News August 21, 2018 Jailed filmmaker Oleg Sentsov on day 100 of Russia hunger strike Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov on Tuesday entered day 100 of his hunger strike, as he languishes in a Russian Arctic prison on terror charges with little hope of release.
News August 13, 2018 Beaten, not broken: the Russian ex-inmate covering the torture trial of former jailers Ruslan Vakhapov says ‘desire for revenge in a legal way’ led him to expose brutality in prison system. He recognised all the prison guards on trial last month for the brutal torture of an inmate in a Yaroslavl prison. They used to be his jailers too.
News August 13, 2018 Russie : "Oleg Sentsov est en train de mourir dans une prison parce qu'il dit des choses qui dérangent", affirme Françoise Nyssen This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the French version.
News August 7, 2018 Russia: widespread torture, extortion detailed in St. Petersburg prisons Allegations of torture in correctional facilities across Russia have gained national attention after a leaked video showed the violent beating of an inmate at a prison in Yaroslavl. A number of prison guards and wardens have since been detained and some convicted, while the Federal Prison Service v…
News August 3, 2018 Russian ex-prisoners speak out over torture after leaked video Alexander Zarechnev is one of a growing number of Russians to break their silence over violence and torture in Russian prisons after a widely shared video of guards beating an inmate shocked the country.
News July 24, 2018 Russia: guard accused of suffocating inmate to death A prison guard in western Russia’s Bryansk region has been detained on suspicion of suffocating an inmate to death by binding his face with a piece of cloth.
News July 24, 2018 Russia: rare witness to horror of Stalin's Gulag prisons dies A rare survivor of the harshest Stalin-era labour camps has died aged 89 in Russia’s far east.
News July 23, 2018 Six arrested in wake of leaked Russian prison torture video Six prison employees have been arrested and at least 17 fired following the release of a 2017 video showing a detainee being tortured at a prison outside Moscow.
News June 20, 2018 Russia: lawmakers finally move forward with legislation that could release 100,000 prisoners After 10 years, the State Duma has adopted a second reading of legislation that would mean less time behind bars for Russians convicted of many crimes.
News May 23, 2018 Russia: security forces in Ingushetia on trial for torture The trial is practically unprecedented in Russia - torture and even the murder of detainees is a common pheonomenon.
News April 14, 2018 Russia: detainees who had rebelled against systematic torture sentenced to heavy sentences At the end of a lengthy trial, 17 participants in a protest that took place in the Kopeysk penal colony (Ural Region) in November 2012 in response to systematic torture practices were sentenced to up to 5 years of prison by the Chelyabinsk Regional Court for “mass riots.”
News September 15, 2017 Russie : Une membre des Pussy Riot raconte les traitements subis dans une prison pour femmes This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the French version
News July 24, 2017 How the gulag lives on in Russia's prison economy In Russia, running a prison is a business, Olga Romanova writes for the Carnegie Center.
News July 24, 2017 How the gulag Llves on in Russia's prison economy In Russia, running a prison is a business. The Soviet gulag may have transformed into Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), but its essence arguably is unchanged. With 434 prisoners per 100,000 people, Russia has the highest incarceration rate in Europe. It’s 143 in the UK, 101 in France, a…
News June 5, 2017 Russia : Russian Interior Ministry ordered to pay $1,200 to man tortured by police The Supreme Court of Tatarstan has ordered Russia’s Interior Ministry to pay 70,000 rubles ($1,200) to a man tortured in a police office, lawyer Andrey Suchkov told RAPSI on Monday.
News May 22, 2017 Thinking Allowed: Russian prison visitors - prison boundaries Relatives of Russian Prisoners: Judith Pallot , Professor of the Human Geography of Russia at the University of Oxford talks to Laurie Taylor about her research into the experiences of the wives, mothers, girlfriends, daughters who, as relatives of Russia’s three-quarters of a million prisoners, ar…
News April 12, 2017 Russia: more than 100 gay men 'sent to prison camps' in Chechnya Abuses allegedly included mean being taken outside and beaten several times a day, having their hands electrocuted and being forced to sit on bottles
News March 10, 2017 Russia’s prison population hits all-time low The number of people in Russian penitentiary facilities has gone down to the lowest level since collapse of the USSR, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) told TASS on the eve of the Penitentiary Day, marked on March 12. Back in 1879, Emperor Alexander II established the prison department.