Petersburg Police Confirm Pepper Spray Used in Precinct

Radio Svoboda

June 19, 2017

The Interior Ministry Directorate for St. Petersburg has confirmed that pepper spray was employed in the 33rd Police Precinct, where detainees from the June 12 anti-corruption protest rally were being held, reports Rosbalt.

As the police’s press service reported, a man was brought to the precinct for minor misconduct. After the man attempted to harm himself, police officers doused his cell with pepper spray. The Interior Ministry claims that after the spray was deployed, the people who had been detained at the protest on the Field of Mars were taken to a meeting room.

Earlier, OVD Info reported that the protest rally detainees complained the pepper spray had spread into neighboring cells. They asked that a doctor be summoned to the precinct, since one of them suffered from bronchial asthma, but police officers did not react. One of the detainees, who had his mobile phone with him in the cell, managed to summon doctors. Subsequently, seventeen people, who had been left to spend the night at the precinct, were transferred to a basement room, where they were held until the evening of the following day. They were not given food, only one bottle of water each.

Alexander Shishlov, Petersburg’s ombudsman for human rights, said he would formally investigate the incident.

More than six hundred people were detained during an unauthorized [sic] protest rally against corruption in Petersburg. The city courts registered 546 cases against the detainees. They were charged with involvement in an unauthorized rally and disobeying the police.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade NS for the heads-up