Between October 2017 and February 2018, the Russian security services

tortured several Russian anarchists and anti-fascists as part of an

investigation into alleged terrorism offences. As a result, eleven people in St

Petersburg and Penza have been arrested and charged in the “Network”

case. They are being detained awaiting trial in 2019. Those tortured have

spoken out about their treatment – Viktor Filinkov did so here, and others

did via the rupression website. This article by Tatyana Likhanova explains

the reaction by the Russian security services and other officials. It reports

on investigations into the defendants’ claims of torture by the Russian

Investigative Committee, the St Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission,

and the defendants’ lawyers. It was published in Novaya Gazeta, the main

liberal opposition newspaper, on 16 December 2018.

“Federal Security Service [FSB] officers don’t work in those minibuses.

They aren’t there. Physically.” This is how Russian president Vladimir Putin

reacted to a statement by Mikhail Fedotov, chairman of the Presidential

Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, that defendants in the

“Network” case claim they were subjected to electric shock torture in state

security service minibuses. But Putin admitted that what Fedotov had said

was “really disturbing” and “that it’s absolutely impermissible”, and

promised to “look into it”.

Let’s note straight away: only St Petersburg victims of the “Network” case

— Viktor Filinkov; Ilya Kapustin, who was questioned about the case as a

witness; and Arman Sagynbaev, who was transferred from St Petersburg to

Penza after arrest — have reported that they were tortured by the FSB in

minibuses. The men detained in Penza were tortured in an investigative

detention centre.

The St Petersburg FSB officers do not deny that they “work in buses” and

that they use electric shockers while doing so. Their explanations are in

documents compiled during an inquiry into Viktor Filinkov’s and Ilya

Kapustin’s statements by the Investigative Committee’s Western Military

District division.

According to statements by FSB officers K.A. Bondarev and S.E. Kotin,

they arrested Viktor Filinkov together with three other members of a

special FSB unit — one of whom “twice applied to V.S. Filinkov special

equipment — an electric shock baton (once in the area of the right thigh, once on the torso)”. This was done when Filinkov allegedly tried to escape

from a service vehicle, a Volkswagen Transporter. Then, “the driver broke

sharply, as a result of which V.S. Filinkov fell on the floor, cutting his face on

protruding plastic elements of the seating, from which he received an

abrasion on his chin.”

In his own statement, Viktor Filinkov said that while in the minibus he was

subject to “no less than ten blows from the palm of a hand, to the back of

the head; no less than 50 blows from an electric shocker in the areas of the

right thigh, the groin, the wrists and the neck; and no less than 20 punches

in the chest, back, back of the head and the left side of the face.”

The medical examination of Filinkov when he arrived at St Petersburg

Investigative Detention Centre No. 3 mentioned bruising, abrasions and

wounds to the top layer of skin, with a note reading “done with an electric

shocker?”.

Yekaterina Kosarevskaya and Yana Teplitskaya, members of the St

Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission (PMC), who visited Viktor

Filinkov in the detention centre three days after the events that have been

described, noted “a large number of traces of injuries caused by an electric

shocker across the whole surface of the right thigh, bruising to the right

ankle, and burns from an electric shocker around the rib cage”.

Kosarevskaya and Teplitskaya counted more than 30 pairs of bruise marks,

characteristic of the shock batons. Filinkov said that he was tortured in a

nine-seater blue Volkswagen Transporter, where he was placed by FSB

officers who detained him at St Petersburg Pulkovo airport. He was ferried

around and tortured for about five hours, during which he was forced to

learn and recite a confession.

Kosarevskaya and Teplitskaya inspected and questioned Filinkov in the

presence of a detention centre officer, in a cell equipped with a video

camera (the video camera was turned on). Yana and Yekaterina, as well as

Filinkov’s lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov, immediately lodged a statement

requiring that the video recordings be kept and included in the case file.

But they were destroyed — allegedly due to the expiry of the “specified

storage period”, as the directors of Investigative Detention Centre No. 3

said in the inquiry materials. This is despite the fact that the detention

centre supervisor confirmed in writing to PMC members that “there are no

rules covering the period for which video recordings are stored”.

The same thing happened with other video recordings — from CCTV at

Pulkovo airport and the police station where Filinkov was taken “to take fingerprints” — that could shed light on what happened from the moment

Filinkov was detained up until his arrival at the St Petersburg FSB building

on Shpalernaya Street. Filinkov’s bloodstained hat and trousers, which the

defence had also demanded were included in the investigation materials,

also disappeared.

Almost 30 hours “vanished”, too: the time between Filinkov’s actual arrest

and the time given by the investigating officers.

A statement by Vitaly Cherkasov, legal counsel for Viktor Filinkov, said: “In

a report by K.A. Bondarev, senior FSB criminal investigator for St

Petersburg and Leningrad oblast [province], there is an incorrect statement

that V.S. Filinkov was arrested on 24 January 2018 at 21.35 at 25

Shpalernaya Street. Neither this, nor the statement by senior investigator

G.A. Belyayev in the arrest report that suspect Filinkov was detained on 25

January 2018 at 00.15, correspond to the actual time at which he was

arrested.”

In addition, on Filinkov’s boarding pass, which is included in the

investigation materials, it is indicated that he checked in on the 20.45 flight

to Minsk from St Petersburg on 23 January 2018. The explanations of FSB

officers also state that they arrived at Pulkovo airport on 23 January, where

they suggested that Filinkov “delay his departure and participate in search

procedures”.

Based on Bondarev’s account of Filinkov’s “escape attempt”, the inquiry by

the military Investigative Committee established that “during the period

from 03:30 to 07:00 on 24/01/2018, on being brought to the investigative

service of St Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast [province] FSB Directorate

for investigation, V.S. Filinkov, while in an official minibus, attempted to

escape…”

Nonetheless, all these inconsistencies in the reported times did not

disconcert the investigators: the request to open a criminal investigation

based on Filinkov’s statement on being tortured was rejected.

An inspection based on Ilya Kapustin’s witness statement on torture

proceeded in a similar manner and with the same result. Kapustin also

apparently tried to escape from an official minibus and was also hurt when

the driver suddenly braked. In order to stop Kapustin escaping and avoid

“consequences related to a person falling out of a moving vehicle”, he was

also shocked a couple of times with an electric shocker. This was described

by FSB officers as an “operational necessity”.

Needless to say, there are no video recordings of these events: “On the

corner of Seventh Sovetskaya [Street] and Grecheskiy Avenue [where the

arrest took place], there are no CCTV cameras,” reads the official inquiry.

This begs the question: why did FSB investigator P.A. Prudnikov “working

in a five-person operational group” travel to this destination “with the aim

of establishing Kapustin’s location”? Why did they not wait closer to

Kapustin’s house? Could it be because on the ground floor of Kapustin’s

apartment block there is a cafe, and across the road there is a bank and an

expensive electronics shop? There’s no shortage of CCTV cameras there.

The inquiry did not investigate what happened in the three-and-a-half

hours after the moment of arrest (21:30) to the beginning of the

interrogation at the FSB building (01:00 the next day). The inquiry did not

question specialists at the Bureau of Forensic Medicine [a regulatory

agency, part of the state health care system], who examined Kapustin and

attested that he suffered bruising to the top eyelid of his right eye, and to

the areas around both shoulders and knee joints, and also no less than 80

abrasions on the upper limbs, belly, around the right hip joint and right

buttock, and the genitals. The experts’ statement concluded that the

abrasions “could have resulted from the usage of an electric shock device,

which is confirmed by their morphological features: mainly rounded or

oval shapes; their sizes; the presence of hyperaemia (redness) at the edges

of the abrasions and reddish, swollen ‘undermined’ edges.

At the meeting with Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Fedotov recounted how he,

together with Evgeny Myslovsky, a colleague from the Presidential Council

on Human Rights, spoke to the management of the regional military

Investigative Committee — but “they couldn’t answer a single question”.

Myslovsky, who worked for 25 years as a senior major case investigator

attached to the RSFSR Prosecutor’s Office, evaluated the quality of the

inquiry into Filinkov and Kapustin’s account of torture in a blog post on the

website of the Council on Human Rights:

“…the inquiry was conducted with deliberate carelessness. The following

remained outside the scope of the inquiry: the basis for conducting the FSB

investigative actions; the identities of the special forces officers who used

the special methods [of restraint]; the identities of the minibus drivers; and

the routes that were used. The minibus itself was not examined to

determine whether an ‘escape attempt’ was possible or the risk of injury

whilst falling as a result of sudden braking. Even without examining the

torture itself, it can be concluded that there were gross violations of the

Russian Criminal Procedural Code during the initial operational search

activities in both cases, which is indicative of either an extremely low levelof legal preparation of the investigators in the St Petersburg FSB or of an intentional disregard for current legislation.”

Evgeny Myslovsky also referred to information about other defendants in

the “Network” case having been tortured. Arman Saginbayev was tortured

during a search of his St Petersburg flat and in a car whilst being

transported to Penza. In Penza, defendants Ilya Shakursky and Dmitry

Pchelintsev made statements that they had been subject to torture.

After Vladimir Putin promised to “look into” what happened,

the parents of the defendants in the “Network” case have made a new

appeal to the Russian president. This appeal notes that existing forensic

methods allow for it to be established whether or not torture by electric

shock was used even after a very long time. In Penza, the defendants’ legal

counsel applied for this kind of examination to be carried out, but Penza

garrison court refused to approve this request.

Tatyana Likhanova

A group of activists centred in London have organised a crowdfunding campaign to help raise funds for legal costs, organizing humanitarian support for the arrested and offering support to their relatives. You can donate here.