St. Petersburg police detain terrorist suspect's lawyer, demanding that she hand over notes about a ‘secret torture prison’

Police in St. Petersburg reportedly detained lawyer Olga Dinze for several hours this week, demanding that she hand over letters passed to her by her client, one of the suspects in the April subway bombing.

Officers allegedly threatened Dinze with lockup and said they would “create problems” for her client, if she refused to surrender the notes. In the end, she was released without handing over the documents.

Dinze’s client says he and his brother were tortured at a “secret prison” run by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), before they were transferred to police custody and formally detained. Dinze says the FSB has threatened her client’s family, demanding that they retract their claims about the supposed secret facility.

A suicide bomber killed 15 people and injured almost 90 on April 3, 2017, when he detonated an explosive vest aboard a St. Petersburg subway train.

In late July, the news agency RBC refused to publish an investigative story by journalist Ilya Rozhdestvensky about a “secret prison” allegedly operated outside Moscow by Russia’s Federal Security Service, arguing that the report had not been properly verified.

According to the report, ultimately published at another website, five men accused of terrorism and murder say Russian federal agents tortured them in a “secret prison” outside Moscow before they were ever formally detained. One suspect says he was electrocuted and waterboarded.