At Moscow’s SIZO-4 detention center, guards force female lawyers to remove their bras during searches

At Moscow’s SIZO-4 detention center, guards force female lawyers to remove their bras during searches in order to reach their clients, lawyer Anastasia Georgiyevskaya said. According to her, this kind of search takes place right in the passageway, not in a separate room. The defense lawyer herself was asked to take off her bra because “something is beeping there.”

“The woman conducting the search nodded to her colleagues: turn away, and they, like decent people, turned away. They did not take me into any ‘special search room’; it was right there, in the passageway, in front of everyone, so to speak. The lawyer-colleague ahead of me was forced to unzip his jeans. That was how he was searched — trousers lowered, underwear sticking out. The search was conducted by a woman,” she reported.

Lawyers who refused to undress were not allowed onto the detention center’s grounds. Human rights advocate Eva Merkacheva said such a search humiliates a person’s honor and dignity.

“Well, this is, in general, something completely beyond the pale. Over the line,” she told the outlet Podyom.

The administration of SIZO-4 has not yet commented on this information.