Well, it’s impossible to endure this. They hit me [with electric shocks] maybe about five times without asking any questions, probably, to stun me or something like that. Then they told me: if you haven’t figured it out, you are in the hands of the FSB, we are not going to play games, you will have to answer our questions now. The answers "no", "I don’t know", "I don’t remember" are wrong answers.

They said the word "Network" to me. I replied: "What network?" Then they spin [the dynamo]. I was out of it for about 15 minutes. They put a gag into my mouth which completely dried it out. When they put a gag into my mouth yet another time, the gag was itself already dried out, and my tongue caught against it, the frenulum [small fold of tissue under the tongue] was torn, and the gag was soaked in blood. "Where is this blood from?" they asked. "I don’t know". And you remember, right, that the answer "I don’t know" is wrong? So they shocked me for that. They were basically killing me in there.

I already had a bruise on my stomach, as if a meteorite had struck me there. In the end, they threw me on the ground, began to pull down my underpants in order to attach the wires to my genitals. I said: "Okay-okay, I get it. What was the last question?" They said: "Did you organise the ‘Network’ terrorist group"? I said: "Well yes, I did." They replied: "That’s it, well done, sit back down."

I sat down, they took out a laptop and began to read some completely meaningless things from it. Right there in the cell from a black laptop. There was agent Shepelev, who later came with the laptop many times. Back then I was seeing all of them for the second or third time in my life, but, naturally, I was trying to remember their voices, when I met them, when I understood that these were them. There was, apart from [agent] Vyacheslav Gennadievich Shepelev, also Sergey Vasilievich Voronkov in the cell. I also thought that [FSB investigator Valery] Tokarev was there, that he was observing how it was going. But he didn’t speak.

"Are you sure? Tokarev? You have never mentioned this before" asks lawyer Oleg Zaitsev.

“I did mention this from the very beginning, but he told me: ‘No, I definitely was not there’. Alright, fine, he was not there.”

"How did you recognise that Tokarev was in the same cell?"

"He was wearing the same clothes that he’d arrested me in, and that he was wearing when I saw him at the FSB office. I saw him and understood that it was him. But then I was not sure, and I decided not to say that it was him – if one is unsure, why testify falsely against somebody? But then I began to be convinced that, at the minimum, he was aware of my torture when he started to discuss it with me."

"Who was in charge of all of that"? [Zaitsev asked]

"Vyacheslav Gennadievich [Shepelev], he was the boss. In fact, he discussed everything with me. From the laptop he read out everything that I would have to say later. In general, I simply did not have any choice – I didn’t believe it was possible for something like this to happen to anyone. But they did not even try to find out whether I knew something or not. They knew that I knew nothing. And therefore instead of asking questions about real circumstances, they asked questions in such a way that I would understand how I had to answer. I was telling them: "Do you understand that this does not make sense at all in relation to what we were doing?" They said: "Ok, what would make sense?" I was trying to correct them: "This is how it would sound realistic" They said: "Ok, well done, we are going to work in this way then."

[...]

When they threw me on the ground, my knees were scratched against the floor, I was bleeding. They complained about my weak knees. When they were already leaving, Shepelev threw me the gag and told me to clean my knees so that no blood remained. I cleaned them, threw it back to him and he said: "If they ask you why you were shouting, you will say: I was singing." I say, ok, I will say that I was singing. He says: "And if they ask why your knees are damaged?" I say: "I will tell them I was praying." He said "Well, alright" and left.

I was taken back to Cell 5.1. I prepared the mattress, thought the situation over and decided that this should not be happening. What do prisoners usually do in this kind of situation? I wasn’t afraid that if I cut my wrists, they wouldn’t have time to save me. I understood what was happening. During the whole interrogation they were saying: "We will take your wife to a forest, cut off her head in front of you, and then bury both of you together – do you want that?" Clearly, they may have been exaggerating slightly, but then I did not have any reason to doubt their words. I agreed with everything they said and understood that they would not leave me alone.

Day two: "Do you remember, I cut my wrists?"

The next day, 29 October, I broke the cell toilet tank and cut my arms, throat – this is what prisoners do to avoid torture. When physical violence is used against them, they cut their veins. I did the same. And even if I had not had an opportunity to make a complaint, I would have been able to say later: "Do you remember that I cut my wrists? And that happened because, damn it, I was tortured with electric shocks."

Next day or the day after, Nesterov, an investigator from the Investigative Committee, visited me and hinted that he came from the FSB agents who appointed him. He asked me to provide explanations without naming anyone or saying anything. I gave him an explanation - like, this is no one’s fault, I did it myself. He refused to open a criminal investigation and left.