The Memorial Human Rights Center reported that after an attempt to escape from pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Rostov-on-Don, during which prisoners took FSIN employees hostage, at least four Muslim prisoners were taken out of the detention center. Human rights activists fear they may be tortured into confessing that they were accomplices of the invaders. Three of them are Chechens, one is a Dagestani, they were transported to pre-trial detention center-2 in Taganrog and lawyers are not allowed to see them.
Among them is Magomed Alkhanov, accused in the case of an attack on Pskov paratroopers in February 2000 — he was 17 years old at the time. Memorial believes that the case against him was fabricated.
Human rights activists write that in the Rostov pretrial detention center, Alkhanov was held in the same cell with the escape participants. The day after the hostage taking, the man told his lawyer that he did not know about his cellmates' plans and reported this to the investigator who interrogated him and «three other employees, presumably FSB.»
«However, they demanded that he admit that he knew about the planned escape. Alkhanov refused, and they told him that they «would meet again,»» Memorial writes.
According to human rights activists, after the hostages were released, Alkhanov and “many other prisoners professing Islam” were beaten by special forces, but their relatives did not report this, fearing that this would only make things worse.
At the end of June, Alkhanov’s relatives learned that he had been transferred to solitary confinement. The lawyer was twice denied a meeting with his client “under mocking pretexts”: the first time, the staff told him that prisoners were throwing bottles from the windows and there was no way to get Alkhanov out, and the second time, that the cell door lock was broken. Finally, on July 1, the defense lawyer obtained a meeting — Alkhanov confirmed that he was in solitary confinement, said that he was limited in his walks, and was not given hygiene products and personal belongings.
Three days later, his wife came to visit the prisoner, but she was told that the man had been transferred to another detention center. Having found out that Alkhanov was in pre-trial detention center No. 2 in Taganrog (the staff refused to say where exactly he had been transferred), the lawyer came there on July 8, 9 and 10, but each time he was told that the prisoner himself refused to meet with him. The defense lawyers of the other three prisoners, who were transferred to Taganrog together with Alkhanov, faced the same problem — the detention center employees issued “written refusals of the services of lawyers, allegedly drawn up by the arrested themselves.”
Six prisoners of Rostov pre-trial detention center No. 1 took two prison staff hostage on the morning of June 16. They had knives, sharpeners, an Islamic State flag and bandanas with Arabic script. The men demanded a car, weapons and the opportunity to leave the detention center. A few hours later, the Federal Penitentiary Service reported that the attackers were killed and the hostages were released.
One of the attackers, Daniil Kamnev, survived. On July 4, the Leninsky District Court arrested him. He did not participate in the meeting. According to Donday, during the storming of the pre-trial detention center, he was wounded in the head. When he regained consciousness, he was transferred to the FSIN hospital and interrogated. He is charged with taking hostages (Part 3 of Article 206 of the Criminal Code), escaping from places of deprivation of liberty (Part 3 of Article 313) and disrupting the work of a colony (Part 3 of Article 321 of the Criminal Code).
Kamnev was in the Rostov pretrial detention center on charges of involvement in the radical Islamic movement At-Takfir Wal-Hijra. The Sova Center reported that Kamnev was previously a Nazi skinhead. In 2013, he was sentenced to 9 years in prison on charges of intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm (Article 111 of the Criminal Code) for participating in a mass brawl. He converted to Islam in prison.
On July 11, the same court arrested another person accused of escaping from the pretrial detention center, 24-year-old Malik Gandaloev. He is charged with escaping from custody with the use of violence (Part 3 of Article 313 of the Criminal Code). Gandaloev was the only prisoner who was detained almost immediately, so he did not take part in the hostage-taking. The Mash Telegram channel claimed that during his arrest he injured the detention center employees with a sharpened object.
After the hostage taking in Pretrial Detention Center No. 1, the head of the FSIN department for the Rostov region, Dmitry Bezrukikh, and his first deputy, Vasily Gordeyev, resigned. Following an internal investigation, four FSIN employees were dismissed, and another 16 were disciplined.