Post #508

The Guardian: “Since the leaked footage had gone public, Osechkin said, other whistleblowers had begun leaking videos from inside at least four other Russian prisons. “I’m proud of that, that I’ve set an example for others with access to information,” said Savelyev, who laughed off popular comparisons to the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In Saratov, he notes, more than 400 inmates have now complained about torture, extortion and sexual abuse at the hands of prison authorities. “It’s a very big number,” he says. “Nothing like that has been seen before.” There is little chance that he can return to Russia or his native Belarus in the foreseeable future. But for now, he says, he feels safe. “I want to continue this,” he says. “For the first time in many years, what I’m doing brings me satisfaction. And it helps people. The recordings of abuse, which Savelyev said were premeditated and then handed off to prison officials or deleted, showed that “these instances of torture, including rape, were committed by order and weren’t just individual decisions”, said Osechkin. Osechkin has written a public letter to Vladimir Putin calling for an end to the “pipeline of torture”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/08/i-was-always-scared-inmate-who-exposed-systemic-russian-prisoner-abuse