MOSCOW (AP) – The video, filmed by a man detained in a protest in Moscow, shows a group of people trapped in a police minibus. One of them says in the recording that they were already being held there for nine hours, some being forced to stand due to overcrowding and access to food, water or baths.
Another video made in a yolk cell intended for eight detainees shows 28 men crammed waiting for the transfer, without mattresses on cots and a dirty toilet similar to a latrine.
Detainees recount miserable experiences as Moscow prisons overwhelmed by mass arrests in protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in this week. They described long waits to be processed through the legal system and crowded conditions, with few precautions for coronavirus.
“We were detained on January 31 during a peaceful protest and we ask for help and public attention on the inhuman conditions in which we are obliged to be,” the man pleads in the video of the police minibus. The video was posted for the first time on Tuesday on the Telegram messaging application by Sasha Fishman, who received it from her friend Dmitry Yepishin, one of the detainees in the vehicle.
More than 11,000 protesters were detained across Russia at pro-Navalny rallies on two consecutive weekends last month in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Tuesday after being ordered by the court to serve nearly three years in prison.
Some of the protesters were beaten on the streets by riot police or abused. Human rights lawyers say many police stations have refused to let lawyers help detainees, citing the “Fortress” protocol.
“I have seen many violations (of detainees’ rights). “But probably the scale we see now is much more frightening than before,” Alexandra Bayeva, coordinator of the OVD-Info rights group that monitors political arrests, told the Associated Press.
While it accounted for less than half of the detentions, the capital’s prisons quickly filled as dozens of people were convicted by the courts. Many have been charged with five to 15 days in prison.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted on Thursday that there were more detainees than could be prosecuted in Moscow detention centers, but blamed the protesters.
“This situation was not caused by law enforcement; it was provoked by the participants in unauthorized rallies “, said Peskov.
Marina Litvinovich, a member of the Public Monitoring Commission that respects the treatment of detainees and detainees, said Moscow simply could not resolve such an influx of protesters convicted of misdemeanors and had to be detained for several days.
“The first crisis took place when police vans and buses (with detainees) were running around Moscow worriedly, and prisons did not let them in. They did not know where to put people,” Litvinovich told AP. “Some people were brought back to the police station. Some sat inside police vans all day near prisons. Some were lucky and were fed and taken to the toilets. Some were unlucky and had to pee in a bottle. ”
Filipp Kuznetsov was arrested on January 23 and sentenced to 10 days in prison, but did not enter his cell until January 27. Kuznetsov told the AP that he spent the first night in a cell and the second night in a police bus waiting for the detention center to house him and about a dozen others.
“It was a very unpleasant situation,” Kuznetsov said.
Gleb Maryasov, also detained on January 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, said his lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov.
As the Moscow prisons filled up, authorities moved people to detention centers outside the capital. Police bus lines have been reported in Sakharovo, 65 kilometers south of the city. On Thursday night, the Sakharovo facility housed more than 800 people, about 90 percent of whom were detained during protests, Litvinovich told Russia’s Tass news agency.
Dmitry Shelomentsev was among those who had to wait in a police bus for a few hours in Sakharavo before being taken inside. Sentenced to 15 days in prison for participating in Tuesday’s protest, Shelomentsev sent AP the short film on Thursday morning from the cell where 28 people were detained, awaiting transfers.
There were not enough beds without mattresses, and police threw two five-liter bottles of water to distribute to all detainees without cups, he said. In the video, some of the detainees were leaning against the short walls that surrounded 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 been allocated cells in accordance with regulations and that there was enough space in the Sakharovo facility.
When asked if there were any virus-related precautions at the detention center, Shelomentsev wrote: “What measure (coronavirus) if we were 28 people in one cell and … people drank from the same jug? ”
Other protesters detained in Sakharovo described traveling in police buses all night before being taken to their cells, according to their friends and partners.
To receive food packages and other basic items, you had to wait outside the detention center for hours at freezing temperatures. Anna Chumakova, who spent the whole day in line on Thursday, said about 150 people lined up by noon, but only less than 40 managed to receive their packages by sunset.
Lawyer Zakhvatov also pointed out reports that dozens of people were sleeping on the floor of the police station. They “highlight the absurdity” of prosecuting Navalny’s allies for inciting coronavirus violations by organizing street protests, he said.
In addition to Sakharovo, there were at least four other detention centers outside Moscow where protesters were taken, according to Litvinovich of the Public Monitoring Commission. Each unit could hold 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 remain brutal, “she said. ___
Associated Press journalists Kostya Manenkov and Tanya Titova contributed.