Paul Goble
Staunton, April 13 – The Team Against Torture, an independent human rights group, has released a report on torture in the Russian Federation. Its findings are interesting but necessarily incomplete because the report was based exclusively on incidents where those who committed this crime were brought to court and convicted.
That is likely why there are no cases reported of torture against women prisoners or of torture carried out by the FSB which is likely to have more success in protecting its officers against charges than are the militia of the interior ministry (echofm.online/documents/pytki-delo-molodyh-novoe-issledovanie-komandy-protiv-pytok-o-portrete-pytatelya-v-rossii).
Nonetheless, because data on torture in Russian penal institutions is so rare and usually anecdotal, the report is worth noting because it was based on an examination of 77 torture cases held in the archives of human rights defenders in which 144 law enforcement officers were convicted of torture.
Three-quarters of those convicted were under the age of 35, 93 percent were employees of the interior ministry, with 88 percent being officers of various territorial subdivisions and 43 percent were part of the Criminal Investigation Department of the ministry, according to the Team Against Torture report.
Fifty-eight percent of those convicted were cooperating with others, the report says, noting that “securing a conviction against those who did not participate in torture but merely turned a blind eye to it is practically impossible.” It also notes that sometimes officers failed to stop their colleagues from torturing people because of ignorance of the law.
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