Sokovykh says the arrest was sudden and loud: he was checking his phone while someone he believed was wearing ordinary clothes pushed him on the road. Sokovykh said he was then grabbed by men in protective gear by his hair and coat and dragged into a police van.
Sokovykh said it was an eternity of interrogation. He says police tried to make him ‘crack’ to falsely admit that he was paid by a foreign agent to attend the protest. Russia has repeatedly blamed the United States for advancing the protests.
“We will lock you up for 5 years. We will put you in a cell where prisoners will rape you again and again. Is that what you want? No? Tell us then!” Sokovykh said the officer demanded.
Alena Kitaeva, a volunteer for Navalny’s main ally Lyubov Sobol, ends up in a room with four police officers in Moscow, one of whom puts a plastic bag over her head and threatens to suffocate her unless she has a password for her phone, her colleague and Sobol’s representative Olga Klyuchinikova told CNN. After the interrogation, Alena was sentenced to 12 days in prison.
Asked about Kitaeva’s case, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters in a daily conference that she would have to file a lawsuit if what she described happened. Kitaeva is currently still in jail.
Sokovykh and several other protesters who spoke to CNN allege abuse by security forces, including violence, threats, intimidation and being stuffed into pickups or cells. CNN has released the Russian Interior Ministry for comment on allegations of violence and overcrowding. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the country’s police, did not respond.
According to OVD-Info, an independent website that monitors arrests, the Russian authorities detained about 11,000 people during demonstrations in support of Navalny.
Some were let go after a few hours. But in Moscow and St. Petersburg, detention centers quickly ran out of space, forcing them to wait for hours in buses without basic necessities.
Sokovykh was eventually released, but he is worried he may be charged later.
Ivan Klementyev was on the post as news photographer about demonstrations in Moscow on January 31 when the riot police detained him, shocked him and beat him with clubs and ripped open his temple, his wife told CNN. He was then put in a police van and had to wait hours to get medical help, his wife said.
Philipp Kuznetsov, an entrepreneur, forced him to participate when Navalny’s team first called to protest and was detained in Moscow on January 23.
Kuznetsov said he then spent more than 19 sleepless hours in an overcrowded police van waiting for an available space in a detention center. It was cold and the van was so packed that someone had to get up at any given moment, and they took turns, he told CNN. None of his family members slept throughout, and food and water were provided by a human rights group, he said.
Both Kuznetsov and Klementyev appeared in court after two days of detention. Judges each sentenced them to ten days in prison for participating in unauthorized rallies.
Both end up at the Sakharovo plant on the outskirts of Moscow, which is commonly used as a detention center for foreign nationals.
‘You look at those white concrete walls [in Sakharovo] and that’s when you get really scared, “Kuznetsov said. You think to yourself, ‘This is it. The regime has shown its teeth. ‘You understand that you were pushed into a place like this, after which you will definitely not go to the protest again. It’s a complete hell. ‘
Footage from the Sakharovo detention facility shows gloomy conditions inside: metal-framed windows without mattresses, an open basement. There was also no social distance and few masks – despite the fact that members of Navalny’s team were placed under house arrest for allegedly violating sanitary rules during the coronavirus pandemic to demand protest.
Russian journalists pressured Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a conference with reporters to comment on what one journalist called “probably the biggest repression that modern Russia has seen”, citing mass detention and mistreatment of journalists who dealt with the protests.
“I do not agree with you. There is no repression in Russia,” Peskov said. “There are only measures that the police take against the perpetrators of the law – against participants in unauthorized rallies,” Peskov added.
Peskov acknowledged that there were more detainees than could be processed, but that “harsh police action was justified by law.”
Poor conditions
Conditions in Sakharovo have sparked public outrage after Sergey Smirnov, editor-in-chief of an independent media outlet, Mediazona, discusses the legal system and human rights violations in Russia, sharing photos showing him being pushed into a cell with 27 other people. 25 days’ imprisonment is imposed in Sakharovo.
Smirnov’s crime was to repeat a joke about himself that, according to the court, incited ‘participation in an unauthorized rally’. He maintains he is innocent and did not even attend the protest.
In a video message to CNN delivered by his cellmate Dmitry Shelomentsev, Smirnov described the circumstances in which he and his fellow inmates find themselves. After posting photos and videos on social media illustrating the poor conditions, Smirnov and Shelomentsev were moved to a cell with fewer people.
Outside Sakharovo, friends and relatives of prisoners stood in icy queues hoping to pass on water and food to their loved ones.
Telegram chats were set up by volunteers to connect people with family members being detained and to coordinate efforts to meet their needs.
Alexander Golovach, a lawyer for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, who spent three days in a small cell at a police station before being in Sakharovo, said help was essential: ‘The first day we were there, they did not give us food, it was just not there, and what we had the next day assured us that we could not rely on it, it was a mockery – large bowls with the thinnest layer of porridge. ‘
Sokovykh said the intimidation and treatment facing the police marks why so many people took to the streets in protest.
“People are protesting for basic human rights, the right to a fair trial. Navalny has personified the absence of such rights and the fact that everything happens in violation of all norms and rules. It happens so blatantly that it is just a spit fire. “In our faces. People can not stand it.”