Legal proceedings started at the Novotroitsky City Court (Orenburg region) in respect of former heads of colony settlement No. 11. At the bar we can see former head of this institution Filyus Khusainov and his deputy Murat Kumarov. Both are charged with crimes under three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Two articles are applied for both of them: sexual battery with violence committed by the group of persons by previous concert and exceeding official authority. Besides, Khusainov is charged with abuse of office, and Kumarov – with receiving a bribe.
(Filyus Khusainov, Murat Kumarov)
In the course of the first hearing two witnesses (the colony employees) were interrogated. Denis Baranov occupied the position of the Deputy Head of Colony for Security until his dismissal in September this year. Besides, on 3 November he was already convicted for receiving the bribe from the convict. In his testimonies he confirmed that he himself gave fifteen thousand rubles (out of the twenty five thousand received from the convict) to Kumarov. Having taken the money, Kumarov ordered Baranov to choose the mobile phone from those that are withdrawn at the territory of the colony and give it to the convict. For that the convict got the right to use the phone without any restrictions and move around the territory of the colony and settlement Guberlya, adjacent to the colony. As for the part where the convict is charged with committing sexual battery, Baranov says that he did not see the events of that crime and cannot explain anything on this matter.
The testimonies of Vladimir Klementiev, deputy head of the colony, were basically, for information only. He could not explain anything as for the essence of the crime, as according to his words, he did not witness those events.
In the course of the proceedings the prison colony subculture (which existence was confirmed by both witnesses) is in the focus of the court examination. Answering the question of the lawyer about his opinion on solving the problem of dividing the convicts into castes, Baranov said: “It needs to be worked out.”
– The case will require the interrogation of twenty nine witnesses. Taking into account a great amount of charges and a number of people involved, the trial is likely to be long, – member of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Vyacheslav Dyundin, representing the interests of the victim in court, reports.
Let us remind that colony settlement No. 11 of the Department of Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Orenburg region appeared to be in the focus of attention of human rights defenders in summer 2013. At that time Irina Balashova applied to us for legal assistance and reported that her partner Sergey Nikonorov serving his sentence in Penal Colony No. 11 for Orenburg region was trapped in unbearable and inhuman conditions created by the staff of the colony which is headed by Filyus Khusainov: convicts were systematically subjected to ill-treatment, including threats of sexual abuse. The treatment had been caused by Nikonorov’s refusals to work at construction sites, and his forced labor complaints lodged with the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office. Former head of this colony Filyus Khusainov was convicted on the basis of these episodes and sentenced to three years of prison term in standard regime penal colony.
In the end of 2013 the picture of the outrageous lawlessness in Penal Colony No. 11 was supplemented with the evidence of two more convicts, К. And D. (the complete data is not provided for ethical reasons – author’s remark), who told us that they had been systematically abused by the employees of the same colony. The feeling of despair made them write letters to the department of the Committee against Tortures, as one of them after his attempt to break out from prison to escape beating turned out to be a failure, was raped by the convicts from the groups of “activists” in presence and by the order of the employees of the colony recording this with the dashboard camera.