Team Navalny’s Rostov-on-Don coordinator reports being abducted and tortured
The coordinator of Alexey Navalny’s Rostov-on-Don office, Ksenia Seryodkina, has reported being abducted and tortured on the night of Thursday, April 23.
On Twitter, Seryodkina wrote that unidentified men detained her and took her to Shirochanka (a small town in the Krasnodar territory’s Yeysky District). There, they tortured her by trying to make her “swallow” a rubber truncheon. “Every time I refused they made a notch in my arm. I have a lot of scratches,” Seryodkina wrote.
She also posted a photo of her injured arm.
Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov wrote on Twitter that the people who abducted Seryodkina allegedly told her, “Well, you love the letter ‘N,’ we’re going to carve it into you.”
Why the activist was detained remains unknown.
In a comment to Open Media, Seryodkina said that she plans to file a police report. She also specified that she doesn’t know whether or not the people who detained her were law enforcement officers. Apparently, the people who abducted her weren’t in uniform and the entire incident took place inside a car. Regional police officials told RIA Novosti that they are “verifying whether the report is true or not.”
On April 21, protests in support of jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny took place across Russia. At the time, Navalny was still on hunger strike (he announced that he was ending his protest on Friday, April 23). According to OVD-Info, more than 1,900 people were arrested at the rallies nationwide. At least 12 people were arrested at the protest in Rostov-on-Don.
