They waited for me to start choking." Yekaterinburg resident describes torture during detention in an army "discrediting" case

"They waited for me to start choking." Yekaterinburg resident describes torture during detention in an army "discrediting" case

A 41-year-old man was detained at his home on the morning of April 17. Security officers threw him to the floor and put handcuffs on him. They demanded the PIN code to his phone. Because of the stress, the man could not remember it right away, and then they started beating him. OVD-Info was told this by his lawyer. Both asked to remain anonymous.

Later, the security officers began examining the detainee's Telegram account, which could be opened with a fingerprint. They demanded Telegram's numeric password, but the man had forgotten it.

"To make me 'remember' it, they used an electric handheld device on me, like a small baton, on my buttocks. Naturally, I didn't remember the password, and they gave me several electric shocks to the buttocks, wanted to douse me with water 'for a better effect,' then dragged me outside, threw me face down onto gravel, and used electricity on me again," the Yekaterinburg resident told his lawyer (OVD-Info has the statement document in its possession).

When the detainee started screaming in pain, they dragged him back into the house. The security officers threatened to cut off his finger so they could unlock the messenger.

"Then they decided to strangle me, brought a bag, put it over my head, and waited for me to start choking. But the bag turned out to have holes, they said I got lucky," the man said. They used electricity on him again.

When the detainee was brought to the police station, the security officers threatened him again:

"They put me against the wall, one of them hit me on the head a couple of times. Before handing me over to the investigator, one of them said that if I did anything wrong, he would come back and break my ribs."

▶️ What the Yekaterinburg resident is accused of

The case was opened because of two comments he posted on VKontakte last year. In one of them, he wrote:

"There were no preconditions for them to attack us. Putin didn't want Ukraine to show Russians an example of how people can live not under a dictatorship, but in a civilized way. They thought they'd take Kyiv in three days. So now we have what we have, with the full approval of Russians."

In the second, he compared the letters Z and V, which became symbols of the Russian army during the invasion of Ukraine, to Nazi symbols: "The Nazis in Germany had zyu and v too."

The Yekaterinburg resident was placed under house arrest for the duration of the investigation.

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Yekaterinburg resident describes torture during detention in an army "discrediting" case

A 41-year-old defendant in an army discrediting case (Part 1 of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code) described torture with electric shocks. OVD-Info was informed of this by his lawyer. Both asked to remain anonymous.The man was detained at his home early in the morning on April 17. Security officers threw him to the floor and handcuffed him. They began to…