This translation was made by AI

A 41-year-old defendant in an army “discrediting” case (Part 1, Article 280.3 of the Russian Criminal Code) has reported being tortured with electric shocks. This was reported by his lawyer. Both have requested anonymity.

The man was detained in his home early in the morning on 17 April. Security forces forced him to the floor and put handcuffs on him. They took away his phone and demanded the PIN code to unlock it. Due to stress, he was unable to remember it immediately, at which point they started beating him.

When he recalled the PIN code, the officers began to examine his Telegram account-the messenger was unlocked using his fingerprint. They then demanded a numeric password for Telegram, but the detainee had forgotten it.

“To make me ‘remember’ it, they used an electric handheld device that looked like a small baton, applying it to my buttocks. Naturally, I didn’t remember the password and they delivered several electric shocks to my buttocks, wanted to pour water on me ‘for better effect,’ then dragged me outside, threw me face-down onto gravel, and once again used the electric shock,” reads the statement given by the Yekaterinburg resident to his lawyer (available to OVD-Info).

When the detainee began screaming in pain, he was dragged back inside the house. There, the officers threatened to cut off his finger so they could unlock the messenger.

“Then they decided to strangle me, brought a bag, put it over my head, and waited for me to start suffocating. But the bag had holes in it, and they said I was lucky. All this time I was lying face-down on the floor, my hands going numb from the tight handcuffs,” the man recounted. Electric shocks were applied to him again.

Afterwards, the officers took him to Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Urals, to search a garage. From there he was brought to the police station.

“At the station, they put me up against the wall, and someone hit me on the head a couple of times. Before handing me over to the investigator, one of them said that if I did anything wrong, he would come back and break my ribs,” the Yekaterinburg resident said.

The case against the man was initiated because of two comments he posted on VKontakte last year. In one, he wrote: “There was no reason for them to attack us. Putin didn’t want Ukraine to show Russians an example of how you can live not in a dictatorship, but civilised. They thought they’d take Kyiv in three days. And now we have what we have, with the full approval of Russians.” In the second comment, he compared the Z and V letters, which became symbols of the Russian army during the invasion of Ukraine, with Nazi symbols: “The Nazis in Germany also had zyu and v.”

While the investigation continues, the Yekaterinburg resident has been placed under house arrest.