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Prison in Saratov, Russia
Photo: Filipp Kochetkov / imago images / ITAR-TASS
The scenes are unbearable: in early October, videos were leaked from Russian prisons that apparently show inmates being tortured and raped.
The anti-torture organization Gulagu.net published the videos.
According to human rights activists, the recordings document "systematic torture" by law enforcement personnel in Russian prisons.
According to the operator of the website, they come from a Belarusian ex-prisoner who served a sentence in a prison in Saratov.
Now Russia is looking for this prisoner.
According to a statement from the Russian Interior Ministry, the Belarusian citizen Sergei Savelyev, 31, is wanted in connection with an unspecified criminal case, as reported by the Moscow Times and the Reuters news agency.
Fearing reprisals, Savelyev fled Russia in February after his release and arrived in France last week.
He applied for asylum there.
He had worked as an IT maintenance officer during his seven and a half year prison sentence for drug trafficking.
In doing so, he gained access to the prison's internal server and the servers of other detention centers, where he found several videos.
He saved it on a USB stick that he hid near the prison exit.
Savelyev said on Saturday in a video published by Gulagu.net that he assumed that the allegations against him were "disclosure of state secrets".
The Russian authorities "are going the only way they know, the route of violence," he said.
They would try to "silence" him.
"It is a shame that they are trying to hide the truth instead of using the time to reform the system and examine all the terrible evidence we have given them," he added.
He called for "all those involved in this torture factory to be punished" instead of his.
After the videos were released, the Kremlin promised to investigate the abuse.
At least four prison officials were released.
Human rights activists regularly report torture, humiliation and beatings by Russian prison staff and other inmates.
Just over a week ago there had been a mass uprising in a prison in the Russian Caucasian republic of North Ossetia.
According to Gulagu.net, the mutiny was triggered by guards beating inmates with rubber truncheons.
kha / AFP