MOSCOW (AP) – The video, filmed by a man arrested in a Moscow protest, shows a group of people trapped in a police minibus. One of them tells the recording that they had already been detained there for nine hours, with some forced to stand up due to overcrowding and access to food, water or toilets.
Another video made in a junk cell intended for eight inmates shows 28 men huddled inside waiting for the transfer, with no mattresses in their cots and a dirty, latrine-like toilet.
Detainees recount their miserable experiences when Moscow prisons were flooded after mass arrests of protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny this week. They described long waits to be processed through the legal system and situations full of people with few precautions for the coronavirus.
“We were arrested on January 31 during a peaceful protest and we are asking for help and public attention to the inhumane conditions we are forced to be in,” the man defends in the video of the police minibus. The video was first posted on Tuesday on the Telegram messaging app by Sasha Fishman, who received it from his friend Dmitry Yepishin, one of the detainees in the vehicle.
More than 11,000 protesters were detained across Russia in pro-Navalny rallies for two consecutive weekends last month and in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday, after the court ordered him to serve nearly three years in prison.
Some of the protesters were beaten in the streets by riot police or subjected to other abuses. Human rights defenders said many police stations refused to let in lawyers to help detainees, citing what is known as the “Fortress” protocol.
“We have seen many violations (of detainees’ rights) before. … But probably the scale we see now is much more frightening than before,” Alexandra Bayeva, coordinator of the rights group OVD-Info, told The Associated Press. which controls political arrests.
Although it accounted for less than half of the arrests, the capital’s prisons quickly filled up, as the courts sentenced some 20 people. Many received charges for misconduct that resulted in prison sentences of five to 15 days.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged on Thursday that there were more detainees than Moscow detention centers that could be prosecuted quickly, but blamed the problem on the protesters themselves.
“This situation was not caused by law enforcement; it was provoked by participants in unauthorized rallies, ”Peskov said.
Marina Litvinovich, a member of the Public Monitoring Commission that monitors the treatment of prisoners and detainees, said Moscow simply could not cope with this influx of protesters convicted of criminal offenses and had to be jailed for several days.
“The first crisis occurred when police vans and buses (with detainees) drove anxiously through Moscow and prisons would not let them in. They did not know where to put people,” Litvinovich told the AP. “Some people were taken back to the police station. Some were standing all day in police vans near prisons. Some were lucky and fed them and took them to the toilets. Some were unlucky and had to pee in a bottle.
Filipp Kuznetsov was arrested on January 23 and sentenced to ten days in prison, but did not enter the cell until January 27. for the detention center to house him and a dozen more.
“It was a very unpleasant situation,” Kuznetsov said.
Gleb Maryasov, also arrested Jan. 23, had to wait for a bed in a cell to be released for 25 hours, spending that time in the back seat of a police car, his lawyer said. Dmitry Zakhvatov.
When the prisons in Moscow were filled, authorities transferred people to detention centers outside the capital. Police bus lines were reported in Sakharovo, 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of the city. On Thursday evening, the Sakharovo facility housed more than 800 people, about 90 percent of whom were detained during the protests, Litvinovich told Russian news agency Tass.
Dmitry Shelomentsev was one of those who had to wait several hours on a police bus in Sakharavo before being taken inside. Sentenced to 15 days in prison for participating in Tuesday’s protest, Shelomentsev sent the AP the short video Thursday morning from the cell where 28 people were detained, awaiting transfers.
There were not enough beds, which did not have mattresses, and police left two five-liter water bottles to share among all inmates, no cups, he said. In the video, some of the inmates leaned against the short walls surrounding the dirty toilet.
After nearly five hours in the cell, Shelomentsev said he was transferred to a smaller one, for four people.
Moscow police said on Thursday that those awaiting the transfer had cells assigned in accordance with the regulations and that there was enough space in Sakharovo’s facilities.
When asked if there were any virus-related precautions in the detention center, Shelomentsev wrote, “What measure (the coronavirus) if we were 28 in a cell and … people drank from the same jar? “
Other protesters detained in Sakharovo described traveling all night in police buses before being taken to their cells, according to their friends and partners.
To get food packages and other basic items, you had to wait hours outside the detention facilities at low freezing temperatures. Anna Chumakova, who spent the whole day in line on Thursday, said about 150 people lined up at noon, but only less than 40 were able to get the packages in the evening.
Lawyer Zakhvatov also noted reports that dozens of people were sleeping on the floors of police stations. These “highlight the absurdity” of prosecuting some Navalny allies for inciting violations of coronavirus protocols by organizing street protests, he said.
In addition to Sakharovo, there were at least four more detention centers outside Moscow where protesters were transferred, according to Litvinovich of the Public Monitoring Commission. Each facility had a capacity for about 30 people and all were filled.
She called the situation “absolutely unprecedented.”
“It’s the beginning, it’s not just the first time. It is the beginning of the process when these prisons will always be full. I think people will continue to protest and the authorities will continue to be brutal, “he said. ___
Associated Press journalists Kostya Manenkov and Tanya Titova collaborated.