The Russian human rights group Gulagu.net has released new videos purportedly showing instances of torture and rape in a prison hospital in the city of Saratov.
The group said the clips published on YouTube on November 9 had been recorded in the OTB-1 tuberculosis infirmary between July 2015 and September 2020.
The nine videos appear to show instances of anal and oral rape allegedly recorded in the infirmary. Seven of them have dates on them.
Gulagu.net founder Vladimir Osechkin, who resides in France, said that the men involved in raping and torturing the inmates were hired by the prison hospital as administrative managers and nurses.
Osechkin said they were supervised by the regional branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), a FSIN deputy director, and a top official of the regional directorate of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
He gives the names of 13 men directly involved in the alleged abuses and their supervisors.
According to Osechkin, the footage was handed to the infirmary's administration, which then passed it on as classified material to the FSIN and FSB.
FSB and FSIN officers recruited the victims as informants after telling them that the videos would be made available to other inmates, he said.
In penitentiaries across Russia and most of the former Soviet republics, raped inmates and gays are treated as pariahs, face humiliation on a daily basis, and do dirty menial work.
Last month, Osechkin said his group obtained a large batch of videos showing prison inmates being tortured so that FSB and FSIN officers could use rape and other forms of torture to force inmates to cooperate with them.
Osechkin released several videos at the time, with one of them showing several people using a large stick to rape a naked man who is tied to a bed.
The videos sparked public outcry that led to resignation of the chief of the FSIN's directorate in Saratov and the firing of five senior prison officials in the city.
After that, more than 400 inmates have made statements saying they were tortured in the prison hospital.
Osechkin has said that the videos were provided by a former prison inmate and an IT expert, Belarusian national Syarhey Savelyeu.
Savelyeu fled to France last month, where he applied for political asylum. Russia issued an arrest warrant, accusing him of "illegal access to digital information."
Russian Rights Group Issues More Videos Of Alleged Rape In Prison
FSB and FSIN officers recruited the victims as informants after telling them that the videos would be made available to other inmates, he said.