Aleksandr Shestun Reported Threats in a Tver Pretrial Detention Center. He Was Sent to Punishment Cell Again Despite a Prolonged Hunger Strike

Aleksandr Shestun reported threats in a Tver pretrial detention center. He was sent to punishment cell again despite a prolonged hunger strike

Politician Aleksandr Shestun said that at the end of April he was sent to a punishment cell for 10 days. He reported this in a letter passed to OVD-Info by an acquaintance.

He was placed in the punishment cell after a visit to SIZO-1 by Sergey Mefed, first deputy head of the Federal Penitentiary Service directorate for Tver Region. Mefed visited the detention center on April 22.

Shestun told Mefed that his complaints to oversight bodies were not being sent out from the detention center, and that one of the staff, Dmitry Vodoleyev, had directly said that his appeals would not be sent and had threatened him.

“We’ll lock you in the old building, where no one will hear the screams from electric shockers being used, or blows to the kidneys and groin,” the politician quoted the staff member as threatening in his letter.

According to Shestun, Mefed “reacted vaguely” to this information. The detention center staff still did not begin forwarding his complaints, and Shestun himself was placed in the punishment cell, which he believes was for “airing dirty laundry.”

The politician wrote that he was continuing his hunger strike: on May 4, his weight was 72 kg. Before that, he had weighed 95 kg. According to Shestun, in the cold conditions of the SHIZO cell, his ankle and hand cramps worsened.

He also said that on April 25, during an inspection of the cell, detention center duty officer Pyotr Reshetov took away all his warm clothes, trampled his pills, and then dragged Shestun by the collar “like a calf to slaughter,” banging him against the doorframe.

On May 12, Shestun’s support group reported that he had been hospitalized. He was taken to the regional hospital in Torzhok because of a serious condition caused by the hunger strike. He began it back at the end of March.

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Aleksandr Shestun / Photo: SOTA