Increasingly, I feel like a forensic doctor assessing torture injuries on the bodies of victims: here they used a mop, here a boiler, a stun gun, somewhere a plastic bag or a bottle, and there a sheet. Routine. And there is not a single settlement on the map of the country where people are not tortured in police departments, temporary detention centers, pre-trial detention centers and colonies. One thing unites all the cases: the indifference of the perpetrators, who, with their appearance and mocking lies in their unsubscribes to the statements of the victims, demonstrate confidence that their position gives them the opportunity to avoid feelings of personal guilt, and the right to escape from prison. They have every reason to be sure of this.
Kaliningrad, Koenigsberg. Beautiful city, Art Nouveau architecture. Five minutes to Europe. The streets of Handel, Brahms, Wagner, Grieg, Hugo, Lefort, Kant, Bessel… But this reality, alas, does not change.
“Hanged himself on a sheet”
The case of Alexander Zakamsky
Alexander Zakamsky with his wife Elizabeth. Photos from the family archive
In March 2018, 25-year-old businessman Alexander Zakamsky was found in solitary confinement, as reported in the news, citing the prison department, “hanged on a sheet.” Four days earlier, he was detained by officers of the Russian FSB department for the Kaliningrad region on suspicion of possession of amphetamine. Zakamsky pleaded not guilty. The court sent him to jail.
Relatives of Alexander suggest that he was beaten to death, and his suicide was staged. Shortly before his death, he complained to both the lawyer and the investigator about being tortured during detention. The interrogation protocol reported that on March 4, in a garage, allegedly forcing Zakamsky to confess to involvement in the sale of drugs, they beat and tortured him with electric shocks, stripped him naked, put a bag over his head, beat him with a stun gun on his genitals, and tried to rape him with a stick. However, later — both the judge and the doctors who provided him with medical care — Alexander said that he had fallen down the stairs.
“At the trial, he was very limping, there were a lot of bruises, abrasions, his head was cut,” she told reporters Elizabeth Zakamskaya.
According to her, her husband managed to tell her that those who beat him threatened to kill him if he reported the torture. Alexander was sent to pre-trial detention center No. 1 — first in a general cell, and then unexpectedly transferred to solitary confinement. On the morning of March 9, Elizabeth was informed that her husband had hanged himself with a sheet. There were no video cameras. In the morgue, when examining the body, the wife of the deceased, in addition to numerous bruises, found a trace on his neck — presumably from a rope.
Liza, like many thousands of other wives, mothers, fathers, wrote to all authorities, went to single pickets at the FSB building in Kaliningrad, at the Lubyanka in Moscow. The Investigative Committee conducted a pre-investigation check on the fact of Zakamsky's death in a pre-trial detention center and, as again in thousands of similar cases, issued a decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case, as it did not find any grounds for this. According to the Gulagu.net project, local security officials allegedly started threatening the widow with drugs if she didn't shut up.
She left Russia. Nobody answered for the death of her 25-year-old husband in the pre-trial detention center. Four years later, she no longer wants to talk about this tragedy — it’s too painful, Elizabeth’s friends told Novaya Gazeta.
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Ivan Vshivkov. Photos from the family archive
October 2019.36-year-old player of the local Progress football club Ivan Vshivkov was boiled alive in the police department for the Moskovsky district of Kaliningrad. He was brought to the department late in the evening for petty hooliganism — he was tipsy, bickering with the patrol that stopped him.
According to investigators, there was a skirmish between Vshivkov and another detainee, after which he was transferred to another cell. There, as follows from the case file, Vshivkov tore off the battery, from where boiling water poured. However, none of the on-duty policemen began to take the man out of the cell, although they saw that Vshivkov’s cell was being flooded with hot water, heard cries for help, and even laughed at the fact that there was steam in the cell (surveillance cameras recorded this). The man suffered burns to 95% of his body and died in the hospital.
Police officers explained the incident as a tragic accident. But video footage from the police station shows that there was no accident. The video was shown in the Moscow District Court of Kaliningrad (the description of the scenes and dialogues from the video, which was shown in an open trial, was given by the Novy Kaliningrad publication, whose journalists attended the trial). The video is terrible. About absolute indifference.
So. A tipsy Vshivkov rips off the battery in his cell after one of the police officers mistakenly calls him «Valera» several times.
Male voices, laughter and replicas of the police are heard: “This is a bathhouse, damn it!”, “Bring a broom”, “***** [wow], steam room!”.
Chief of the shift, lieutenant Nikolai Plebukhsays to someone: “This idiot broke the battery.”
Inna Zakharova, an electronics engineer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs department, asks the police how hot water enters the chamber, after which she says: “Well, let it boil there.” She tells police officer Alexander Ivanov that Plebukh is trying to turn off the heating, and complains that because of this, the police will “freeze to hell.”
After some time, the shift supervisor, Nikolai Plebukh, demanded that the police call the head of the precinct commissioners of the OMVD for the Moskovsky district. Zakharova could not get through.
Alexander Ivanov said: “Well, Kolyan, ****** [guard]? Sailed. The ship is sinking.”
Zakharova laughed and repeated this phrase.
Then Plebukh contacted someone by phone, and Ivanov called the Unified Duty dispatcher service and reported a pipe break. He did not say that the incident threatened the detainee. While the police were talking on the phone, Vshivkov started knocking on the door and shouting.
New Kaliningrad journalists were able to make out one of his phrases: “Help, *****!”.
At that moment, patrolman Alexander Koltunov looked into the duty room, offering to turn on the ventilation.
Inna Zakharova: “What is he yelling about?”
Alexander Koltunov : «*** knows him. Where is he there? It's like a fog there. Can't get his bearings.»
Alexander Ivanov: «Like a hedgehog in the fog, ***** [damn]».
Inna Zakharova : «It's brewing, brewing there, you know how it is in hell — ahh!»