Human rights defenders said jailed opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev, who is accused of co-plotting mass riots, had confirmed during a meeting with them that he had been abducted in Ukraine, where he had fled.
“We had been pressing for a meeting with Razvozzhayev since 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday. At 6:30 p.m. we were able to meet with him. We waited for five hours. We had been told that he was being interrogated, but in actual fact he was free. There had been instructions from someone to prevent us [from meeting him],” Valery Borshchyov, head of the Moscow Public Supervisory Commission and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Interfax.
“As far as we could gather from what Razvozzhayev was saying, there was torture, but he wasn’t beaten – there was just terrible psychological torture, and he was forced to give false evidence,” Borshchyov said.
The rights defender said Razvozzhayev wanted a defense lawyer. “He has been given a state lawyer, but we understood that Razvozzhayev believes that that lawyer is working against him,” Borshchyov said.
“We spoke to Razvozzhayev for at least an hour. What’s happening is a terrible and very serious case.”
Razvozzhayev confirmed reports he was abducted in Ukraine. “He said four men dragged him into a minibus, tied his arms and legs with Scotch tape and put a hat on him to prevent him from seeing anything,” the commission head said.
“Razvozzhayev suspects that he was kept in the Bryansk region [a Russian region bordering Ukraine] for a while. He didn’t eat for three days, couldn’t go to the toilet, they were trying to force him to do what they wanted him to. That’s his own words. We got the impression he was telling the truth,” Borshchyov said.
Public Supervisory Commission members have an unrestricted right to visit detention centers in Moscow.
