Moscow jail makes lawyers strip at checkpoint to see their clients. Women told to remove bras, men to lower their pants.
Guards at Moscow’s pretrial detention center No. 4, known as “Medved,” have begun requiring defense attorneys to remove their underwear during searches, according to defense attorney Anastasia Georgievskaya.
Georgievskaya said the searches happen right at the checkpoint rather than in a separate room. Guards told her to remove her bra as well, because, they said, it was setting off the detector.
The woman conducting the search told my colleagues: turn away, and they, like honest people, turned away. We weren’t taken into any “special search room” — it happened right there at the checkpoint, in front of everyone, so to speak. The defense attorney colleague ahead of me was made to unzip the fly on his jeans. That’s how the search went: pants pulled down, underwear showing. A woman carried out the search.
Georgievskaya said not all of her colleagues agreed to the procedure. Those who refused were ultimately barred from seeing their clients.
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