Sokovykh says the detention was sudden and harsh: he was checking his phone when someone he believed to be an undercover cop pushed him out onto the road. Sokovykh said he was grabbed by his hair and jacket by men in protective gear and dragged to a police van.
What followed, said Sokovykh, was “an eternity” of questioning. He says the police were trying to “break” him, to falsely confess that he was paid by a foreign agent to attend the rally. Russia has repeatedly blamed the United States for fomenting the protests.
“We are going to lock him up for 5 years. We are going to put him in a cell where inmates are going to rape him again. Is that what you want? No? Then tell us!” Sokovykh said the officer demanded.
Alena Kitaeva, a volunteer with Navalny’s main ally, Lyubov Sobol, ended up in a room with four policemen in Moscow, one of whom put a plastic bag on her head and threatened to choke her unless she provided a password for her phone, she Sobol’s colleague and representative Olga Klyuchinikova told CNN. After interrogation, Alena was sentenced to 12 days in prison.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked about Kitaeva’s case on a daily conference call with journalists, if what she described really happened, then she should have filed a lawsuit. Kitaeva is still in prison.
Sokovykh and several other protesters who spoke to CNN alleged abuse by security forces, including violence, threats, intimidation and huddling in vans or cells. CNN contacted the Russian Interior Ministry to comment on allegations of violence and overcrowding. The Interior Ministry, which oversees police forces in the country, did not respond.
In recent weeks, Russian authorities have arrested about 11,000 people in demonstrations to support Navalny, according to OVD-Info, an independent website that monitors the prisons.
Some were dismissed after a few hours. But in Moscow and St. Petersburg, detention centers quickly ran out of space, forcing detainees to wait hours on end of buses without basic necessities.
Sokovykh was finally released, but he fears that charges could be brought against him later.
Ivan Klementyev was working as a news photographer covering demonstrations in Moscow on January 31, when the riot police arrested him, electrocuted him and beat him with batons, opening his temple, his wife told CNN. He was put in a police van and had to wait hours to get medical help, his wife said.
Philipp Kuznetsov, a businessman, felt compelled to participate when Navalny’s team called to protest for the first time and was arrested on January 23 in Moscow.
Kuznetsov said he spent more than 19 hours without sleeping in a crowded police van, waiting for an available place in a detention center. It was cold and the van was so crowded that at any moment someone had to get up, so they took turns, he told CNN. Throughout the process, none of his van companions slept, and food and water were provided by a human rights group, he said.
Both Kuznetsov and Klementyev appeared in court after two days in detention. Judges sentenced them to 10 days in prison for participating in unauthorized demonstrations.
Both ended up at the Sakharovo facility on the outskirts of Moscow, normally used as a detention center for foreigners.
“You look at those white concrete walls [in Sakharovo] and that’s where you get really scared, “said Kuznetsov.” You think to yourself, ‘That’s it. The regime showed its teeth. ‘You understand that you have been pushed to a place like this, after which you will definitely not go to the rally again. This is complete hell. “
Images from the Sakharovo detention center show bleak conditions inside: metal-framed bunks without mattresses, an open latrine. There was also no social detachment and few masks – despite the fact that members of Navalny’s team were placed under house arrest for allegedly violating sanitation rules during the protesting coronavirus pandemic.
Russian journalists pressured Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a conference call with reporters to comment on what a journalist called “probably the biggest crackdown modern Russia has ever seen”, citing mass arrests and mistreatment of journalists who covered the protests.
“I don’t agree with you. There are no repressions in Russia,” said Peskov. “There are only measures taken by the police against lawbreakers – against participants in unauthorized demonstrations,” added Peskov.
Peskov admitted that there are more detainees than can be prosecuted, but that “severe police measures are justified according to the law”.
Bad conditions
Conditions in Sakharovo caused public outrage after Sergey Smirnov, editor-in-chief of an independent media outlet Mediazona covering the justice system and human rights violations in Russia, shared photos showing how he was squeezed into a cell with 27 others. people after being sentenced to prison in Sakharovo for 25 days.
Smirnov’s crime was to retweet a joke about himself that the court ruled as “inciting participation in an unauthorized rally”. He claims he is innocent and hasn’t even attended the demonstration.
In a video message to CNN provided by his cellmate Dmitry Shelomentsev, Smirnov described the conditions in which he and his companions were. After photos and videos were posted on social media illustrating the precarious conditions, Smirnov and Shelomentsev were moved to a cell with fewer people.
Outside Sakharovo, friends and family of detainees line up in low temperatures in the hope of passing water and food to their loved ones.
Telegram chats were organized by volunteers to connect people with detained relatives and to coordinate the effort to provide them with the essentials.
Aleksander Golovach, a lawyer for the Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation who spent three days in a tiny cell at a police station before arriving in Sakharovo, said help was essential: “The first day we were there, they didn’t give us food because it just wasn’t there, and what we had the next day assured us that we can’t count on it, it was a mockery – huge bowls containing the finest layer of porridge. “
Sokovykh said the intimidation and treatment he faced by the police shows why so many people have taken to the streets in protest.
“People protest for basic human rights, for the right to a fair trial. Navalny has come to personify the absence of such rights and the fact that everything happens in violation of all norms and rules. It is already happening so blatantly that it is just a spit on our faces. People can’t take it. “