Meet the new school principal Students outside Krasnoyarsk will soon be under the supervision of someone once responsible for prisoners who say they were tortured

Evgeny Martynov isn’t like other high school principals. City officials in Achinsk (about 100 miles west of Krasnoyarsk) announced his appointment as school director on October 29, welcoming him from the “Zapadny” social welfare center, which he supervised for the past two years. Officials praised Martynov’s ability to make learning “comfortable for children and teachers alike,” but they omitted his full résumé: For more than a decade, he worked at a nearby prison where inmates have complained of torture. Martynov rose to the rank of deputy warden before leaving Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service at some point after 2010. His first day as school principal is November 9.

When commenting on Evgeny Martynov’s appointment, Achinsk city head Alexander Tokarev said High School Number 11’s new principal has “previous experience interacting with educational organizations and social-sphere work skills that will be useful in his new role.” For his part, Martynov says he studied education management in a professional retraining course and hopes to make the school’s students and staff feel welcome.

Martynov started working at Achinsk Remand Prison Number 3 in 1994, first as a foreman and later as a police investigator before he was promoted to deputy warden in 2010. It’s unclear when he left the prison service, but public records indicate that he was already employed at the “Zapadny” social welfare center by 2019.

Journalists at Tayga.Info say inmates at Martynov’s prison have repeatedly complained about torture and “deplorable inhuman conditions” behind bars. One former prisoner who was incarcerated at the facility in 2014 says he was humiliated during a search when guards forced him to disrobe completely and squat in front of several women.

Another report describes an inmate who was confined to an intensive monitoring cell for eight days without any clothes. On one of these days, the guards allegedly tied him to a wooden shield and stuck him in the middle of the cell, forcing him to “relieve himself” all over himself. In the past two years alone, the Achinsk City Court has heard at least 10 lawsuits filed by inmates at Martynov’s old prison.