The video, shot by a man detained during a demonstration in Moscow, shows a group of people getting stuck in a police minibus. One of them says on the survey that they have already been detained there for nine hours, with some forced to stand due to overcrowding and no access to food, water or bathrooms.
In another video taken in a winding detention cell for eight prisoners, 28 men can be seen crammed inside waiting for transport, without mattresses on the cot and a dirty toilet in the pit.
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Prisoners tell of their miserable experiences when Moscow prisons were overwhelmed after mass arrests of protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny this week. They describe long waiting times to be processed by the legal system and overcrowded circumstances with few coronavirus precautions.
“We were detained during a peaceful demonstration on January 31 and we are asking for help and public attention for the inhuman conditions in which we are forced to be,” the man pleaded in the police minibus video. The video was first posted on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday by Sasha Fishman, who received it from her friend Dmitry Yepishin, one of the inmates in the vehicle.
More than 11,000 protesters were detained on two weekends last month in pro-Navalny rallies across Russia and on Tuesday in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after being ordered by the court to serve nearly three years in prison.
Some protesters were beaten on the street by riot police or subjected to other abuses. Human rights advocates said many police stations refused to let lawyers in to help inmates, citing what is known as the “Fortress” protocol.
“We have seen many violations (of the rights of prisoners) before. … But probably the extent we see now is much narrower than before,” said Alexandra Bayeva, coordinator of the OVD-Info rights group, which monitor political arrests, told The Associated Press. .
While making up less than half of the arrests, the prisons in the capital filled up quickly when numerous people were sentenced by the courts. Many received charges of misconduct resulting in imprisonment of five to 15 days.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted on Thursday that there were more detainees than detention centers in Moscow could process quickly, but he blamed the protesters themselves.
“This situation was not provoked by law enforcement; it was provoked by participants in unauthorized rallies,” Peskov said.
This photo, released by Philipp Kyznetsov in his Instagram account, philipp_kuznetsov, shows him, right, and posed for a selfie with a group of detainees in the police bus in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, January 27, 2021. Filipp Kuznetsov was arrested on Jan. 23, 2021 and on 25 January 2021 sentenced to 10 days imprisonment, but he only got into his prison cell two nights later. Kuznetsov told the AP he spent the first night at a police station, and the second night in a police bus, waiting for the detention center to house him and about 20 others. (philipp_kuznetsov via AP)
Marina Litvinovich, a member of the public monitoring commission that oversees the treatment of detainees and detainees, said Moscow simply could not handle such an influx of protesters convicted of offenses that should go to jail for a few days.
“The first crisis occurred when police vans and buses (with prisoners) drove anxiously into Moscow and prisons did not let them in. They did not know where to place people,” Litvinovich told the AP. “Some people were taken back to the police station. Some stood all day in police vans near the prisons. Some were lucky and they got food and brought to toilets. Some were unlucky and they had to pee in a bottle.”
Filipp Kuznetsov was arrested on January 23 and sentenced to ten days in prison, but he did not appear in jail until January 27. for the detention center to house him and about a dozen others.
“It was a very unpleasant situation,” Kuznetsov said.
Gleb Maryasov, who was also detained on January 23, had to wait 25 hours for a bed in a cell to be released. He spent the time in the back seat of a police car, said his lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov.
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As prisons filled Moscow, authorities moved people to detention centers outside the capital. Lines of police buses were reported in Sakharovo, 65 kilometers south of the city. By Thursday evening, there were more than 800 people in the Sakharovo plant, about 90% of whom were detained during protests, Litvinovich told the Russian Tass news agency.
Dmitri Shelomentsev was among those who had to wait a few hours in Sakharavo in a police bus before being taken inside. Shelomentsev, who was sentenced to 15 days in prison for participating in Tuesday’s protest, sent the short video to AP on Thursday morning from the cell where 28 people were detained, awaiting transfer.
There were not enough beds that did not have mattresses, and police officers unloaded two bottles of five gallons of water to share among all the inmates, without cups, he said. In the video, some of the prisoners stand leaning on the short walls that surrounded the dirty toilet.
After nearly five hours in the cell, Shelomentsev said he was transferred to a smaller one – for four people.
Police in Moscow said on Thursday that those awaiting transfer had allocated cells in accordance with the regulations, and that there was enough space in the Sakharovo plant.
When asked if there were any virus-related precautions at the detention center, Shelomentsev wrote: “What (coronavirus) measures if we were 28 in one cell and … people drank from the same jar?”
Other protesters detained in Sakharovo, according to their friends and partners, described driving in police buses all night before being taken to their cells.
To get food parcels and other basic things with them, it was necessary to wait for hours in the cold temperatures outside the detention facilities. Anna Chumakova, who spent the entire day in line on Thursday, said about 150 people would be in line by noon, but just under 40 could bring in their packages by sunset.
Attorney Zakhvatov also pointed to reports that dozens of people were sleeping on the floors of police areas. It “underscores the absurdity” of prosecuting some Navalny allies for inciting coronavirus protocols by organizing street protests, he said.
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Besides Sakharovo, according to Litvinovich of the Public Monitoring Commission, there were at least four other detention centers outside Moscow where protesters were taken. Each facility could accommodate about 30 people and all were filled.
She calls the situation ‘absolutely unprecedented’.
“This is the beginning, this is not just the first time. This is the beginning of the process when these prisons will always be full. I think people will continue to protest and the authorities will remain cruel,” she said.