НАСТОЯЩИЙ МАТЕРИАЛ (ИНФОРМАЦИЯ) ПРОИЗВЕДЕН, РАСПРОСТРАНЕН И (ИЛИ) НАПРАВЛЕН ИНОСТРАННЫМ АГЕНТОМ «КОМАНДА ПРОТИВ ПЫТОК» ЛИБО КАСАЕТСЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННОГО АГЕНТА «КОМАНДА ПРОТИВ ПЫТОК» | 18+
In April 2023, 30-year-old Sergey Bershatskiy committed suicide in the Orenburg pretrial detention center no. 1. His mother, Natalya Pivtsaykina, didn’t expect the suicide, and it raised a lot of her questions. Neither the Federal Penitentiary Service (the FSIN) nor the prosecutor’s office helped the woman find out what had happened to her son.
Sergey Bershatskiy was arrested in September 2022 in Lyubertsy on suspicion of theft. After the arrest, the man was placed in a pretrial detention center in Kolomna, then he was transferred to Ufa and subsequently – to Chelyabinsk. On 5 April 2023, Sergey was transported to Orenburg. Natalya indicates that her son had no problems during transfer to any of these pretrial detention centers. A week before his suicide, Sergey had a court’s hearing – that’s where his mother saw him for the last time.
«He was very happy to see me, and asked how I was doing, how my brother and dad were doing. I know my son well, he loved me very much and would not have left like that, without even leaving a note,» claims Natalya.
According to the investigative authorities, the official version of the suicide is Mr. Bershatskiy’s inability to cope with the situation of his ill health. The verbatim conclusion was as follows:
«The man was in a temporary mental disorder caused by an adaptation disorder, which can be assessed as a mixed anxiety and depressive reaction with anxiety-depressive syndrome (F43.22 according to ICD-10). The suicide attempt was an act of despair, hopelessness, and escape from a situation of ill health that was unbearable for him.»
Bershatskiy’s mother did not agree with this version of the investigation: the woman requested medical documents about her son’s health from the FSIN, but her demand was rejected. The Penitentiary Service motivated such rejection by the fact that Sergey had not named his mother as a person who could receive information about his health. This made Natalya even more suspicious, especially when she saw the CCTV footage of Sergey’s last days. Firstly, he wrote something in a notebook the day before his death – these inscriptions would never be found. Secondly, her son had an allergy – and the mother wanted to know what medications he was prescribed and whether they could have affected his mind. Thirdly, the same footage shows Sergey moving around the cell strangely and grabbing his head the day before his suicide.
A criminal case was opened into Sergey’s death, but later it was closed, without finding the culprits and without answering the questions that worried the mother. In particular, there is still no answer to the question: what disease prompted Mr. Bershatskiy to commit suicide? The lawyers who represent Natalya’s interests requested medical documents from the FSIN – as the woman has the right to see them as Sergey’s close relative. However, the demand was rejected; the officials cited medical confidentiality. Therefore, Natalya contacted the prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutor’s office supported the position of the Penitentiary Service with the same wording about medical confidentiality. Subsequently, the lawyers challenged the answers before the court, and the court decided that Bershatskiy’s mother had the right to familiarize herself with the medical documents of her deceased son. Despite the court’s ruling, the Orenburg regional prosecutor’s office did not conduct an internal investigation and find out why the prosecutor for supervision of correctional facilities took the position of the FSIN, and not the position of Sergey’s mother. Natalya has still not been familiarized with the medical documents – the court’s decision came into force on 6 June 2024.