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Vitaly Gimaldinov, a former traffic police inspector from Tulun in Irkutsk region, a large area in Siberia, has said that FSB officers tortured him during a search. Mediazona reports this, citing a source in People of Baikal.
According to the 26-year-old Gimaldinov, at around six a.m. on 13 April, FSB and ROSN special forces officers arrived at his home. He said that in the courtyard officers used a stun gun on him, demanding the password to his phone, and later put him in a car where the torture continued and they demanded a confession.
Gimaldinov says that during the torture he hit his head against a wall and lost consciousness. When he came to, the officers, he said, put a stun gun to his genitals and demanded he “confess.” In addition, according to Gimaldinov, FSB officers threatened to get his parents fired and told him that while in detention he would “be deprived of his manhood.”
Gimaldinov is facing criminal charges of bribery (part 1 of article 290 of the Criminal Code). He maintains that the accusation is fabricated.
Earlier, his colleague and friend Viktor Askhaev complained to the General Prosecutor’s Office about possible corruption in the local traffic police. He discovered that a driver who had been stopped for driving without a licence escaped punishment: in the police database, the driver’s patronymic had been entered incorrectly, so the offence was registered under a non-existent person. According to Askhaev, his superior destroyed his report and deleted the offence from the record. Afterwards, he sent the complaint using Gimaldinov’s email.
FSB officers also detained Askhaev. He was charged with unlawfully using personal data (paragraph “g” part 3 article 272.1 of the Criminal Code). Askhaev also reported torture: according to him, during a search, the officers pulled down his trousers and tried to force a traffic police baton into his anus. Later, a court fined him 150,000 rubles (about US$1,650).
Askhaev believes that the criminal cases against him and Gimaldinov are revenge for the complaint about corruption. Gimaldinov has been under investigation for more than six months. The video with his account of torture was recorded several months ago, but has only now been published.