A legal expert from Kaliningrad, sentenced to two years, has spoken about being beaten and other forms of pressure.

Sven Nordin, a legal expert from Kaliningrad in western Russia, who was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for “insulting the honour and dignity of a Great Patriotic War veteran online” (part 4, article 354.1 of the Russian Criminal Code), has spoken about being subject to pressure in Kaliningrad’s Penal Colony No. 8. This was reported by SOTAvision.

The prisoner spoke about being targeted because of his homosexuality: “Almost everyone here crudely and abusively insults me for ‘supporting faggots’ and calls me a ‘fag’ myself.” Nordin said that on one occasion, other prisoners beat him up and broke his nose. The colony administration did not hold those responsible to account. Nordin himself was banned from writing complaints to the Federal Penitentiary Service, under threats of further beatings and having his head pushed into the toilet.

Additionally, Nordin reported harsh working conditions and declining morale: “I’ve been made to clean the entire barracks, the stairs, the service rooms, the whole yard. I can’t take all this, either physically or mentally. My condition is critical: apathy, hopelessness.” The authorities have also denied him phone calls. He added that he is “the only prisoner here who still hasn’t even been given a Zonatelecom phone card or registered for one.”

Sven Nordin was transferred to the colony in December 2024. Earlier, in September, it became known that he had been put on a preventative watch list in the remand centre as someone “prone to spreading extremist ideology.” Nordin also faced systematic pressure: he was banned from phone calls and contact with his lawyer, was not given his warm clothes or books, was given less food, and was not allowed to use the library.

The case against the lawyer was opened on 9 August 2022. Investigators claim that in September 2021, Nordin posted on his VKontakte page an article entitled: “KARATSUPA AND CHIKATILO: SIMILAR FACES, DIFFERENT FATES, ONE REGIME.” The post ended with the words: “Of course, even Chikatilo would hardly have outdone the ‘achievements’ of Karatsupa.” Documents state that Nordin, who “formed an approving attitude to the actions of Adolf Hitler” and was “a supporter of the ideology of German Nazism,” compared in his post border guard Colonel and Hero of the Soviet Union Nikita Karatsupa and serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, thereby insulting the former. In June 2024, Kaliningrad Regional Court sentenced him to two years in a standard-regime penal colony.

Before the case was opened, in the summer of 2022, Nordin’s home was searched, during which officers used a stun gun and beat him. After this, the legal expert was taken to court, which imposed restrictions on his actions as a pre-trial measure. In February 2024, the Investigative Committee refused to open a criminal case over the beating. Previously, Nordin had also spoken about the harsh conditions in a psychiatric hospital, where he was placed at the investigator’s request as part of the investigation.