'It Was Not Suicide': Russian Rights Group Releases More Videos Of Alleged Prison Torture

The Russian human rights group Gulagu.net has released new videos purportedly showing instances of torture in a prison hospital for tuberculosis patients in Siberia.

The group published the latest clips on YouTube on December 20, saying that they had been recorded in the tuberculosis infirmary No. 1 in the city of Krasnoyarsk.

According to the rights group, the videos are the first in the latest batch from an archive compiled by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) that a new informant managed to smuggle out of the country in recent weeks.

Neither FSB or FSIN officials immediately commented on the videos.

One of the videos shows two FSIN officers instructing two inmates on how to beat and rape a third inmate. Later, a young inmate is brought into the room, where the two inmates beat him. They push him under a bed and cover the bed with mattresses and blankets to muffle what is happening.

A video also shows an inmate falling from a window. The founder of the Gulagu.net group, Vladimir Osechkin, says the inmate died.

"It was not suicide," Osechkin says.

According to Osechkin, the published videos represent less than 1 percent of the latest batch of materials that he and his group have obtained.

Osechkin, who currently resides in France, has issued several other videos showing the beating and torture of inmates by guards, penitentiary employees, and other inmates since October.

In November, he published videos showing instances of rape allegedly recorded in an infirmary in the city of Saratov. Osechkin has 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 branches and directorates of the FSIN and FSB and identified some of them.

According to Osechkin, the footage was handed to the infirmary’s administration, which then passed them 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 if they did not cooperate, he said.

In penitentiaries across Russia and most of the former Soviet republics, homosexuals and inmates who have been raped are treated as pariahs, face humiliation on a daily basis, and are forced to do dirty menial work.

In October, Osechkin said his group obtained a large batch of videos showing FSB and FSIN officers using rape and other forms of torture to force inmates to cooperate.

Osechkin's materials -- published on YouTube -- sparked a public outcry and led to investigations in the FSIN directorate and in penitentiaries in the Saratov region.