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A 41-year-old individual involved in a case of “discrediting the army” (Article 280.3, Part 1 of the Criminal Code) has spoken about being tortured with electric shocks. Their lawyer told OVD-Info about this. Both have requested anonymity.
The person was detained at their home early in the morning on 17 April. Officers forced them to the floor and put handcuffs on them. Their phone was confiscated and they were ordered to provide the unlock pin code. Due to stress, the person could not recall it immediately, so they were beaten.
Once they remembered the pin code, the officers began searching their Telegram account—the messenger was unlocked via fingerprint. They then demanded the Telegram numeric password, but the detained person could not remember it.
“To ‘help’ me remember it, they used an electric handheld device, similar to a small baton, on the buttocks area. Naturally, I still could not remember the password, so they used the device several more times on my buttocks, threatened to pour water on me ‘for a better effect,’ then dragged me outside, threw me face down on gravel, and used the device again,” the Yekaterinburg resident explained in their statement to their lawyer (a copy is available to OVD-Info).
When the detainee began screaming from the pain, they were dragged back into the house. There, the officers threatened to cut off one of their fingers in order to unlock the messenger app.
“Then they decided to suffocate me, brought a plastic bag, put it over my head, and waited for me to start choking. But the bag had holes in it, and they said I was lucky. The whole time, I was lying face down on the floor, my hands numb from the tightly fastened handcuffs,” the individual recounted. Electric shocks were used again.
The officers then took them to Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Urals, to conduct a search in a garage. From there, they were taken to the police station.
“At the station, they put me up against the wall, one of them 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,” said the Yekaterinburg resident.
A case was opened against the person because of two comments they wrote last year on VKontakte. In one, they wrote: “They had no reason to attack us. Putin didn’t want Ukraine to show the Russians how it’s possible to live not in a dictatorship but in a civilised manner. They thought Kyiv would be taken in three days. Well, now we have what we have, all with the complete approval of Russians.” In the second comment, they compared the letters Z and V, which became symbols of the Russian army during the invasion of Ukraine, to Nazi symbols: “The Nazis in Germany had zyu and v as well.”
While the investigation is ongoing, the Yekaterinburg resident has been placed under house arrest.