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A resident of Sevastopol, Alexei Rodin, has spoken about being tortured by law enforcement officers, who demanded he confess to writing a comment approving of the shooting of police officers in Dagestan. His account is published by Astra.
The man said that early in the morning on 9 July, a group of law enforcement officers burst into his home in Sevastopol together with official witnesses. Rodin was forced face-down on the floor and pressured to admit to writing a comment on Telegram.
“They burst in at 6 a.m. on 9 July, put me on the floor, and demanded the password to my phone and that I admit to writing the comment. I wouldn’t give them the password, refused to identify myself, and said I hadn’t written anything. This infuriated the officers—they started twisting my leg and arms, then burned my right big toe with a lighter. They hit me in the face, threw socks at my face,” Rodin told Astra.
After the search, the man was taken to the local Centre for Countering Extremism. Ultimately, he was charged with disobeying police orders (Art. 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences) and held overnight in the station. The next day, the court fined him 3,000 roubles (about US$33).
Rodin himself maintains that he did not write any such comment, and that the account used to post the message is not his. During the court hearing, the alleged comment was not mentioned as a reason for his detention. It is not known whether the case has developed further.
The man linked the law enforcement officers’ actions to the fact that he had previously been fined under an administrative article on “discrediting” the Russian army (Art. 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences). In addition, he had been prosecuted administratively several times over online publications of pictures of pagan runes, which the police regarded as displaying Nazi symbols (Art. 20.3, Part 1, of the Code of Administrative Offences).
A week after the search, Rodin left for Moscow, where he sought hospital treatment for burns and other effects of the beating. Doctors diagnosed him with a closed coccyx fracture, without bone displacement. As a result, Rodin lodged a complaint with the Investigative Committee about the actions of the law enforcement officers.