DISINFO: Alleged torture videos in Russian prisons were not given by a whistleblower but sold for US dollars
SUMMARY
According to security officials, Sergey Saveliev did not transfer the video files to human rights activists, but sold them for $ 2,000. The funds were transferred to Yandex-wallet.
RESPONSE
Classical attempt to discredit a whistleblower who has recently sought asylum in France who reveals embarrassing facts for the Russian authorities and the NGO which defends human rights in prisons.
Sergey Savelyev smuggled footage out of Russia showing hundreds of cases of sexual assault and torture of convicts in Russian prisons. Mr. Savelyev started sharing the videos with human rights activists after his release in February 2021. Gulagu.net has said guards and other prison officials bribed or forced inmates to torture other inmates in order to secure false testimonies. The videos purportedly show rape and other forms of torture in Russian prisons and pretrial detention centres in several regions.
The NGO Gulagu.net never hid the fact that it helped whistleblower Sergey Saveliev to hide from Russian penitentiary administration and seek asylum in France. However, the video files that were also transmitted to journalists, the UN Human Rights Committee, Council of Europe anti-torture Committee and Interpol were not subject to any transaction and the money transfer system Yandex was not used. The head of Gulagu.net and Sergey Saveliev recounted the story on Russian TV channel Dozhd.
Russia, alongside Turkey, ranks amongst the countries with the highest proportion of incarcerated people in Europe, according to a recent report by the Council of Europe.
Human rights groups have repeatedly slammed Russia’s "systematic” torture of its prison inmates.
Read also: Handcuff marks are not signs of torture of Pratasevich, a fighter of the brutal neo-Nazi battalion, The Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of torture visited Chechnya and found no evidence of extrajudicial executions.