Sokovykh says the detention was sudden and harsh: He looked at his phone while someone he thought was a plainclothes officer pushed him onto the road. Sokovykh said he was then grabbed by his hair and coat by men in protective gear and dragged into a police van.
What followed, Sokovykh said, was “an eternity” of questions. He says the police tried to get him to “crack”, falsely admitting that he was paid by a foreign agent to attend the meeting. Russia has repeatedly blamed the United States for fueling the protests.
“We’ll lock you up for 5 years. We’ll put you in a cell where prisoners will rape you over and over. Is this what you want? No? Then tell us!” Sokovykh said the officer demanded.
Alena Kitaeva, a volunteer for Navalny’s main ally Lyubov Sobol, ended up in a room with four police officers in Moscow, one of whom put a plastic bag over her head and threatened to suffocate her unless she provides a password for her phone, her colleague and Sobol’s representative, Olga Klyuchinikova, told CNN. After the questioning, Alena was sentenced to 12 days in prison.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about Kitaeva’s case during a daily conference call with journalists, that if what she described actually happened, she should have sued. Kitaeva is currently still in prison.
Sokovykh and several other protesters who spoke to CNN alleged assault by security forces, including violence, threats, intimidation and being locked up in vans or cells. CNN has reached out to Russia’s Interior Ministry for comment on allegations of violence and overcrowding. The Interior Ministry, which oversees police in the country, did not respond.
According to OVD-Info, an independent site that monitors arrests, Russian authorities have detained about 11,000 people in demonstrations in support of Navalny in recent weeks.
Some were released after a few hours. But in Moscow and St. Petersburg, detention centers quickly ran out of space, forcing detainees to wait in buses for hours without basic necessities.
Sokovykh was eventually released, but is concerned that charges could be brought against him later.
Ivan Klementyev was on the road as a news photographer for demonstrations in Moscow on Jan. 31, when riot police arrested, electro-shocked and killed him with clubs, opening his temple, his wife told CNN. He was then put in a police van and had to wait hours for medical attention, his wife said.
Philipp Kuznetsov, an entrepreneur, felt compelled to participate when Navalny’s team called for a protest for the first time and was detained in Moscow on January 23.
Kuznetsov said he then spent 19 sleepless hours in an overcrowded police van, waiting for an available spot in a detention center. It was cold and the van was so packed that someone had to stand at any time, so they took turns, he told CNN. During the entire time none of his vans slept, and food and water were provided by a human rights organization, he said.
Both Kuznetsov and Klementyev appeared in court after two days of detention. Judges each sentenced them to 10 days in prison for participating in unauthorized meetings.
Both ended up in the Sakharovo facility on the outskirts of Moscow, which is normally used as a detention center for foreigners.
‘You look at those white concrete walls [in Sakharovo] and then you get really scared, “said Kuznetsov.” You think to yourself, ‘That’s it. The regime has shown its teeth. ‘You understand that you have been pushed into a place like this, after which you will certainly not go to the rally anymore. This is hell. “
Images from the Sakharovo detention center show gloomy conditions: metal-framed bunk beds without mattresses, an open latrine. There was also no social distance and few masks – despite members of Navalny’s team being placed under house arrest for allegedly breaking sanitary rules during the coronavirus pandemic for calling for protests.
Russian journalists, during a conference call with reporters, urged Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to comment on what one journalist has “seen probably the greatest repression in modern Russia,” citing mass detentions and mistreatment of journalists covering the protests.
‘I do not agree with you. There is no repression in Russia, ”said Peskov. “Measures have only been taken by the police against the violators of the law – against participants in unauthorized rallies,” Peskov added.
Peskov admitted that there are more detainees than can be processed, but that “harsh police measures are justified in accordance with the law”.
Bad conditions
Conditions in Sakharovo caused public outrage after Sergey Smirnov, the editor-in-chief of an independent Mediazona news outlet that reports on the justice system and human rights violations in Russia, shared photos showing how he was crammed into a cell with 27 other people after sentenced to prison of 25 days in Sacharovo.
Smirnov’s crime was retweeting a joke about himself that the court said had “incited participation in an unauthorized meeting.” He claims he is innocent and did not even attend the demonstration.
In a video message to CNN from his cellmate Dmitry Shelomentsev, Smirnov described the conditions in which he and his fellow inmates found themselves. After photos and videos were posted on social media illustrating the bad conditions, Smirnov and Shelomentsev were moved to a cell with fewer people.
Outside Sacharovo, friends and family of inmates queue up in freezing temperatures, hoping to pass water and food on to their loved ones.
Telegram chats have been set up by volunteers to connect people with detained family members and coordinate efforts to provide them with essentials.
Aleksander Golovach, a lawyer at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation who spent three days in a small cell at a police station before going to Sacharovo, said the help was essential: “The first day we were there, they didn’t feed us because it just wasn’t there, and what we had the next day assured us we can’t rely on this, it was a mockery – huge bowls of the thinnest layer of porridge. ”
Sokovykh said the harassment and treatment he faced by the police shows why so many people took to the streets in protest.
“People are protesting for basic human rights, the right to a fair trial. Navalny is the epitome of the absence of such rights and the fact that everything is done in violation of all norms and rules. It is happening so blatantly that it is just a spit. in our faces. People can’t stand it. “