In IK-3, Kaluga Region, dozens of prisoners opened their veins due to ill-treatment

“About sixty” inmates in IK-3 of the Kaluga region in the village of Tovarkovo cut their veins open because of complaints about beatings and conditions of detention, informs Mediazona citing lawyer Yulia Chvanova. Because of the penalties, these convicts were kept in punishment cells and cell-type rooms. The wife of one of them clarified that a few days ago there was a “Moscow check” in the colony.

«[Перед этим] they took away all their personal belongings, warm clothes, and elementary medicines. And someone else was beaten there – that was the last straw, – she said. “They were on hunger strike for two days, no one paid any attention to them, and they decided to open themselves up this evening.”

One prisoner who opened his veins was taken to the city hospital, says the prisoner’s wife, referring to friends in the colony.

Complaints from prisoners began to come in large numbers after IK-3 was headed in March by Pavel Ryzhenkov, the former deputy head of Vladimir’s IK-3, known as Motorca. The media, human rights activists and former prisoners have repeatedly talked about systematic beatings and torture in this colony in the Vladimir region.

After Ryzhenkov’s appointment in IK-3 of the Kaluga Region, “many prisoners” were sent to a punishment cell, and he himself took part in the beatings, says the wife of the convict. One of the prisoners, 21-year-old Maksim Chumaev, told Chvanova’s lawyer that during a search in the colony on September 14, Ryzhenkov hit him on the stairs several times on the head, knocked him down, and then kicked him.

Chumaev, according to him, had a broken nose, but he did not manage to get to the medical unit and remove the beatings. With a lawyer, he sent complaints to the regional prosecutor’s office and the RF IC.

The press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Kaluga region told Mediazone that they “do not know anything” about the situation in the colony, and hung up.