Watchdog

A list of BBC correspondents working in Russia has been leaked online after Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, said it was checking the legality of the BBC World News channel's Russian operations and its websites.

The list of 44 journalists, most of them Russian nationals, appears to have first been published in the anonymously run For Mother Russia group on the VKontakte social network on December 25.

Hours later, the list of reporters -- along with their photographs -- appeared on the Russian site Pikabu, which resembles Reddit.

The leak came days after The Times published a list of names and photographs of eight reporters working for the Kremlin-backed Sputnik's U.K. bureau in Edinburgh.

The Russian Embassy in London reacted angrily, saying Moscow "will respond in kind."

The For Mother Russia group accused The Times of trying to put "psychological pressure" on Russian journalists and "discredit" them.

A BBC spokesperson expressed frustration at the leak.

"The BBC has strict editorial guidelines and has not published the details of journalists from other media organizations as there was no editorial reason or justification to do so. We are disappointed at the groundless publication of our Moscow team's details," the spokesperson was quoted by British media as saying on December 27.

The leak of the list of BBC journalists also came a week after Roskomnadzor warned the BBC it would launch an investigation into what it called the broadcaster's violation of impartiality rules.

Roskomnadzor said on December 21 that the goal of the verification was to establish whether the content of the BBC operation is consistent with Russian laws.

Roskomnadzor's statement came a day after British media watchdog Ofcom said it was considering sanctioning Russia's state-financed RT, saying it had broken impartiality rules in seven programs earlier this year, including coverage of the poisoning in Britain of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Britain blames the Russian government for the poisoning of the Skripals in the city of Salisbury in March. Russia has repeatedly denied evidence that its agents were behind the poisoning and accused British intelligence agencies of staging the incident to stoke what they called "Russophobia."

The Skripals survived the poisoning, in which a Soviet-made military nerve agent known as Novichok was used.

Two other British citizens were exposed to the same nerve agent in June, apparently by accident; one of them, Dawn Sturgess, died.

The BBC said on December 21 that it worked in full compliance with Russia's laws and regulations to deliver independent news.

With reporting by The Guardian

A rights group in Russia says that authorities are investigating allegations of "systematic" beatings and torture at a second prison in the Yaroslavl region.

The NGO Public Verdict said on December 27 that a lawyer on its staff, Irina Biryukova, was present a day earlier when Investigative Committee officers questioned four inmates who complained that they had been tortured at Corrective Colony No. 3 in the city of Uglich.

According to Public Verdict, one inmate -- Aleksandr Kochergin -- claims that on October 24, he was stripped naked, forced to do 50 squats, and beaten.

When he screamed that he has low immunity due to HIV, the beating continued, and he was then confined to a tiny, unheated cell under a stairway – the kind of space in which it is typically impossible to sit or stand straight.

"The torture only stopped when convicts on two floors [of the unit] began to shout and bang on the doors of their cells," Public Verdict said in a statement.

It said another inmate, Nurali Nurov, said he has been beaten repeatedly since 2016 -- including on his first day at the prison, when he refused to sign documents without a translation from Russian into his native language, and another time after he testified that he had seen bruises on the body of a fellow inmate.

According to Biryukova, 25 inmates are considered victims in the case.

She said the investigation was opened in November but that the inmates only learned about it last weekend.

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Russian Authorities Probe Alleged Abuses In Prisons After Torture Video Emerges

In July, Public Verdict provided the newspaper Novaya Gazeta with a video that showed at least 17 guards beating an inmate who lies prone on a table at Corrective Colony No. 1 in the regional capital, Yaroslavl.

The video caused a public outcry.

Russian law enforcement authorities arrested at least 12 guards at that prison and announced that prior complaints by inmates across Russia would be investigated.

The cases have shone a spotlight on what activists say is widespread abuse and torture of Russian prison inmates.

Valery Maksimenko, deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), said that the country needs more prisons to hold police officers, prison guards, and other law enforcement agents who have been convicted of crimes.