TWO MORE
JEHOVAH'S
WITNESSES REPORT TORTURE DURING DETENTION IN VORONEZH, ONE HAS
BROKEN RIB
Voronezh
Jehovah's
Witnesses Yury Galka and Anatoly Yagupov described inhumane
treatment on the
part of personnel of law enforcement agencies through their
lawyer, who visited
them in a SIZO. They said that on the day of their arrest, they
were smothered
with bags and also beaten, with demands for "confessions."
Earlier,
believers Bokov, Katyrov, and Korol, who were detained in the
same place,
described beatings.
Lawyers
tried to get
to Yagupov and Galka from the time they were put into the SIZO
No. 1 for
Voronezh oblast, but the defense lawyers were permitted to meet
with them only
after two weeks, on 29 and 30 July, a correspondent of the
portal Credo.Press
reports, with reference to a source among Russian Jehovah's
Witnesses.
According
to their
testimony, 44-year-old Yury Galka has a broken rib. Torture
began during a
search and continued during interrogation. F.S.B. officers
twisted his arms
behind his back and put a bag on his head, tightening it until
Yury began to suffocate.
During this time he was beaten, breaking his rib. They demanded
that he confess
to extremism. The broken rib was discovered when he was put into
the SIZO, but
personnel at the facility took advantage of Yury's state of
shock and wrote in
the documents that he had received the injury from daily life.
Fifty-one-year-old
Anatoly
Yagupov was tortured in a similar manner. They put a bag on his
head
and beat him on the chair on which interrogators had placed the
detainee.
In all,
now, five
Voronezh Jehovah's Witnesses have complained about torture on
the part of
security forces. Despite the torture, the Voronezh believers
have refused to
acknowledge they are guilty of "extremism." They have registered
their wounds at medical institutions in order to protest the
actions of law
enforcers.
As
reported earlier,
on 13 July more than 110 searches were conducted in homes of
Jehovah's
Witnesses in Voronezh and the region. All 396 religious
organizations of this
confession in the R.F. were ruled to be extremist and liquidated
in 2017 by the
Supreme Court. (tr. by PDS, posted 8 August 2020)
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