Russian peace activist reported dead in jail following allegations that officials were torturing him

An activist named Anatoly Berezikov has died in a special detention center in Russia’s Rostov region, his lawyer told the human rights group OVD-Info. Attorney Irina Gak says she went to the jail on June 14 to visit her client but was informed that he wasn’t in the building. She says she then observed his body being loaded into a medical vehicle in the jail’s courtyard.

A day earlier, Gak says she noticed marks on Berezikov’s body evidently caused by stun guns, which she says the authorities used to torture him. Berezikov himself told her that officials had threatened to kill him. Gak says she now believes he was killed while being tortured. An unnamed official at Berezikov’s detention center told OVD-Info that he supposedly killed himself in his jail cell.

Berezikov was in and out of jail for the last month on multiple misdemeanor charges of disobeying police officers and committing disorderly conduct. Human rights activists say the real reason for these prosecutions, however, was Berezikov’s collaboration with the Ukrainian peace project “I Want to Live,” whose leaflets he posted around the city.