The closed hearings in respect of former heads of Colony-Settlement No.11 of the Department of Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Orenburg region Filyus Khusainov and Murat Kumarov continue in Novotroitskiy City Court of the Orenburg region. Another hearing was dedicated to the interrogation of the victim, former convict of the correction facility К. (the full data is not provided for ethical reasons – author’s note). Vyacheslav Dyundin representing the interests of the victim speaks of the details of the court proceedings:

(Vyacheslav Dyundin)

– The interrogation lasted for five and half hours with an hour-and-a half lunch break. Sometimes the victim forgot about my recommendations and got involved into unnecessary arguments with the lawyers of the defendants who from time to time tried to make him lose his temper. However, on the whole, the victim stood the trial and fully confirmed the events that took place in October 2013.

In particular, he confidently gave the name of a certain convict who was one of the perpetrators of the crime and who giving his speech as a witness the other day denied his participation in the execution. According to the victim, he had been abused in this colony even before he suffered sexual battery. The abuse of K. by the administration of the facility was caused by numerous complaints of K. on refusing to provide medical help to him in the facility. The employees of Federal Penitentiary Service (the heads of the facility) threatened him with raping and transferring into the lowest caste of the prison subculture. On 12 October, on Saturday, after he had been warned by one of the convicts about the coming night execution, K. made an attempt to escape with the purpose to get to the Chelyabinsk department of the Federal Penitentiary Service where K. wanted to report on the disregard of the law at Orenburg Colony Settlement No. 11. But he was captured and arrested in Orsk by the employees of the same facility that he tried to run away from in order to avoid sexual abuse. The fugitive was taken to the colony where head of the colony Filyus Khusainov and his deputy Murat Kumarov organized an “exemplary” raping of the victim with a “large-scale watching” of the committed crime. Three convicts from the “offended” caste were invited as perpetrators, and the employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service (no more than ten people, including officers) made a half-circle and acted as the audience. At the court hearing K. gave the list of names of some of them.

The employees of the facility watched silently, no one protested, no one demanded to stop the criminal acts committed in respect of K. We can make a natural conclusion based on the story told by K., that such a treatment of “the guilty” convicts was a routine in this correctional facility. Everybody knew everything and no one had any intention to change anything.

In the course of the court hearing the defendants did not ask K. a single question, delegating this chance to their lawyers. Kumarov was sitting with his head low all day long. Khusainov, on the contrary, was sitting at the prisoner’s box as if in the presidium, with his hands crossed at his chest, watching nervously what was going on around him. Once he even addressed the judge with a complaint that I supposedly “was prompting the victim how to answer the questions with the help of my mimics”. In the evening, on the way to the hotel victim K. said that during the interrogation, standing at the speaker’s stand, he tried to catch the look of Khusainov, but each time the former “master” of the colony looked away.  

“The defense team is scared of the publicity a lot, – continues Dyundin. – Gazret Saginbaev, the lawyer of Kumarov, again doubted my right to cover the events of the closed hearing in the mass media, though previously the judge explained that following the interests of the victim the intimate details should not be made public. The lawyer asked the victim if he gave his representative (i.e., me) such permission. On receiving the positive reply he tried to continue the subject with the question to the victim: “Why do you need this?”, but following my request judge Pavel Ivlev withdrew the question.”

The hearing continues on 28 November 2016.