Member of the Public Monitoring Commission for monitoring the human rights observance in the detention facilities of the Nizhny Novgorod region (PMC) Dmitry Utukin reported on the results of today’s visit to Penal Colony No.14 (Sukhobezvodnoye  settlement) by the public monitors.    

 

According to Utukin, yesterday around 4 p.m. the convicts of several groups, passing their term in Penal Colony No.14, refused to leave the outdoor ground after the line-up – they demanded from the administration of the facility to arrange a meeting with the Prosecutor. No violence was used either by the convicts or by the colony administrative staff, the Prosecutor was summoned to the colony, who conducted individual meetings in the course of yesterday and today.  

Members of PMC Dmitry Utukin, Natalya Zhukova, Andrey Bulanov and Nikolay Korolev, who arrived today in colony No.14, were also meeting with the convicts in the course of the day: totally thirty persons were questioned, apart from that the public monitors received a hundred written complaints.  

«The complaints are mainly concerned with battery and blackmail by the convicts who collaborate with the administration, – reported Utukin. – During the inspection of one of the premises we even found a hook beaten into a ceiling, on which, according to the convicts, the delinquents were hanged upside down and beaten up. We shall process all the complaints and submit them to the Investigative Committee in the nearest future».