Moscow on Saturday announced the search of ex-prisoner Sergei Savelyev, who released videos showing the torture and rape of prisoners in a Russian prison.
According to an entry on the website of the Russian Ministry of the Interior, a Belarusian citizen Savlyev, who has applied for asylum in France, has been declared in search of a crime of an unexplained nature.
Saveljev managed to secretly deliver videos outside the prison showing the torture of prisoners in Saratov Prison.
After serving a 7.5-year prison sentence for drug smuggling, Saveyev worked as an administrator of the prison’s internal computer network, giving him access not only to the prison’s own servers but also to other servers in the Russian prison system.
They contained, among other things, video recordings of torture carried out by a so-called active prisoner on behalf of prison administration officials.
Some of Saveyev’s videos have been published by the prisoners’ rights organization Gulagu.net, forcing the Russian authorities to launch a formal investigation.
Saveljev said he thought he was being sought in connection with the “disclosure of state secrets” and that the Russian authorities wanted to silence him.
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