In recent weeks allegations have arisen of so-called ‘secret prisons’ which are supposedly being used by the FSB to detain and torture individual suspects in terrorism offences.  An investigation by Russian independent newspaper Republic has uncovered the stories of six suspects who all recounted stories of kidnapping, detention and torture in an undisclosed location.

According to Russian independent newspaper Republic, one of the suspects in the recent terrorist attack on the St. Petersburg metro which killed 16 people, Abror Azimov, was arrested as he departed Moscow in an attempt to flee Russia for Syria.  His car was stopped on the roadside by police officers who ordered him to proceed to the neighbouring town in which he was, supposedly, to be questioned at a local police station.

Republic claims that “the suspect never made it to the police station: on the way there he was stopped, searched, handcuffed and a black bag was thrown over his head.  He was then put into a separate vehicle which drove for around 40 minutes to an undisclosed location where he was led into to a basement.”

It was in this basement, or “dungeon” in his own words, that Azimov was held for just over two weeks (one of which was spent with a black bag over his head) as his unidentified captors extracted information from him through various means of torture.

In the wake of these shocking allegations Republic has located five other people — all suspects in terror offences — who claim to have been detained and tortured off the record before they were brought in and processed in the conventional way at a police station.  The revelations that these people made describe their captors as an undefined blend of retired security service agents, as well as recounting various means of torture with a range of instruments, the details of which match up to the place to which Azimov was taken on April 5.

Azimov’s brother, Akram, who was arrested by FSB agents while hospitalised in Kyrgyzstan, also ended up in the same prison as his brother.  Reportedly Akram mysteriously appeared in Moscow the same evening that he was taken out of hospital by members of the security services.  He arrived late that evening on a commercial flight to Moscow, was detained on arrival, handcuffed and led out through the service exit into the hands of secret police.

In their appeals to the Chief Military Investigation Department, the descriptions given by the men of the appearance of the location they were being held, as well as some of the methods of torture they were subjected to, coincide neatly with each other.  The men recount particular forms of electrocution and water torture which were consistent with the descriptions of the others.

According to Republic, on three occasions the kidnappers were wearing civilian clothes.  However, when later asked whether they were working for the FSB, the ‘officers’ replied that they had left the service.  One suspect claimed that “It is clear that they [the kidnappers] coordinated their activity with the FSB.”

It is not a wholly uncommon practice for the Kremlin to look to criminal gangs to do their dirty work.  It is more than likely that the kidnappers were not in fact members of the security services, but rather ‘hired nobodies’, subsequently removing the FSB from the risk of direct allegations of torture.  Similar tactics were deployed by the Yanukovich government at the time of the Maidan revolution in which criminals were reportedly paid to violently assault protesters.

This form of extrajudicial punishment for terror offences is a worrying development.  In recent months we have seen ‘anti-extremism’ laws used time and time again against opposition activists, in which unmarked officers have conducted raids of Open Russia and Alexey Navalny’s offices.

The revelations of secret prisons so close to Russia’s capital city could be a worrying sign of things to come as political dissenters in Russia more and more frequently find themselves targeted by the security services for supposed ‘extremist’ activity.  As the political heat rises in advance of the 2018 presidential elections, could these secret prison be a sign of things to come?