MOSCOW (AP) – The video, taken by a man detained during a protest in Moscow, shows a group of people trapped in a police van. One of them says on the recording that they had been held there for nine hours, with some forced to get up due to overcrowding and no access to food, water or bathrooms.
Another video shot in a dingy cell meant for eight inmates shows 28 men crammed inside waiting for transfer, with no mattresses on the beds and a filthy latrine-like toilet.
Detainees tell of their miserable experiences when Moscow prisons were overwhelmed after mass arrests of protests in support of opposition leader Alexei Navalny this week. They described long waiting times to be processed through the legal system and busy conditions with few coronavirus precautions.
“We were detained in a peaceful protest on January 31, asking for help and public attention for the inhumane conditions we must find ourselves in,” said the man in the video from the police minibus. The video was first posted on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday by Sasha Fishman, who received it from her friend Dmitry Yepishin, one of the inmates in the vehicle.
More than 11,000 protesters were detained across Russia in pro-Navalny rallies on two consecutive weekends and Tuesday in Moscow and St Petersburg last month after he was sentenced by court to nearly three years in prison.
Some protesters were beaten in the street by riot police or abused in other ways. Human rights lawyers said many police districts refused to let lawyers in to assist detainees, citing what is known as the “Fortress” protocol.
“We have seen many violations (of the rights of detainees) before. … But probably the scale we see now is much scarier than before, ”Alexandra Bayeva, coordinator of the OVD Info rights group that oversees political arrests, told The Associated Press.
While it accounted for less than half of the detentions, the capital’s prisons quickly filled when dozens of people were sentenced by the court. Many faced felony charges leading to five to 15 days in prison.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged on Thursday that there were more detainees than Moscow detention centers could handle quickly, but blamed the protesters themselves.
“This situation was not caused by law enforcement; it was provoked by participants in unauthorized gatherings, ”said Peskov.
Marina Litvinovich, a member of the Public Monitoring Commission that observes the treatment of prisoners and detainees, said Moscow simply could not cope with such an influx of protesters convicted of crimes and needing a few days’ imprisonment.
“The first crisis occurred when police vans and buses (with prisoners) drove fearfully through Moscow and the prisons wouldn’t let them in. They didn’t know where to put people,” Litvinovich told the AP. ‘Some people have been taken back to the police station. Some were in police vans at the prisons all day. Some were lucky and fed and taken to toilets. Some were not lucky and they had to pee in a bottle. ”
Filipp Kuznetsov was arrested on January 23 and sentenced to 10 days in prison, but did not arrive in his cell until January 27. Kuznetsov told AP that he spent the first night in a cell and the second night in a waiting police van. for the detention center to house him and a dozen others.
“It was a very unpleasant situation,” said Kuznetsov.
Gleb Maryasov, who was also detained on January 23, had to wait 25 hours for a bed in a cell to be cleared for him and spent that time in the backseat of a police car, his lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, said.
As Moscow prisons filled, authorities moved people to detention centers outside the capital. Lines of police buses were reported in Sacharovo, 40 miles south of the city. Thursday night, the Sakharovo facility housed more than 800 people, about 90% of whom were detained during protests, Litvinovich told Russia’s Tass news agency.
Dmitry Shelomentsev was one of those who had to wait in a police bus for several hours in Sacharavo before being taken inside. Sentenced to 15 days in jail for participating in Tuesday’s protest, Shelomentsev sent the short video to AP on Thursday morning from the cell where 28 people were being held pending transfers.
There weren’t enough beds, which didn’t have mattresses, and police officers dropped off two five-liter bottles of water to share among all inmates, without cups, he said. In the video, some inmates stood leaning on the short walls surrounding the dirty toilet.
After nearly five hours in the cell, Shelomentsev said he was transferred to a smaller cell – for four people.
Moscow police said on Thursday that those awaiting transfer were assigned cells in accordance with regulations, and that there was ample space in the Sakharovo facility.
When asked if there were virus-related precautions in the detention center, Shelomentsev wrote, “What measures (coronavirus) if we were 28 of us in one cell and … drank people from the same can?”
Other protesters detained in Sacharovo reported driving police buses all night before being taken to their cells, according to their friends and partners.
To get food parcels and other basic necessities, people had to wait for hours outside the detention centers in freezing temperatures. Anna Chumakova, who queued all day Thursday, said that by noon about 150 people were in line, but only less than 40 could receive their parcels by sunset.
Attorney Zakhvatov also pointed to reports that dozens of people were sleeping on the floors of police stations. These “underscore the absurdity” of prosecuting some Navalny allies for inciting coronavirus protocol violations by staging street protests, he said.
In addition to Sakharovo, there were at least four detention centers outside Moscow where protesters were admitted, according to Litvinovich of the Public Monitoring Commission. Each facility could seat 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 cruel, ”she said. ___
Journalists Kostya Manenkov and Tanya Titova from Associated Press contributed.