The four men suspected of carrying out the shocking terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall last week have already been subjected to brutal treatment at the hands of Russia’s security forces.
Alleged Islamic State gunman Saidakrami Murodali Rajabalizoda was held down by a security team, who in graphic video footage appeared to saw off part of his ear – and then forced him to eat it.
‘Chew, bastard! I will cut you open and shove it into your mouth,’ one man is heard yelling. Moments later the suspect was seen with blood streaming down the side of his head as a chunk of skin tumbled out of his mouth.
Another detainee, Shamsiddin Fariduni, was seen lying on the floor foaming at the mouth with his trousers forced down around his knees.
That is because the group who arrested him had connected a military radio to his genitals via a piece of wire to administer electric shocks – a favourite torture method deployed by Russia’s armed forces.
All four suspected gunmen later appeared in a Moscow court, their faces battered and bruised following what is certain to have been a savage beating by the arresting forces.
But their ordeal may only just be getting started.
For it is only when these men are committed to the depths of one of Russia’s strict regime penal colonies that the real torture will begin.
Here, explores the dark reality of Russia’s prison system and recaps the heinous torture methods used by guards and fellow inmates alike to physically and psychologically break their prey.
Photographs show one of the suspected terrorists, named as Shamsuddin Fariddun, lying on a gym floor with his trousers pulled down and wires evidently attached to his groin area
Murodali Rachabalizoda, a suspect in the shooting attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue, sits behind a glass wall of an enclosure for defendants at the Basmanny district court in Moscow, Russia March 24, 2024
Muhammadsobir Fayzov sits in a glass cage in the Basmanny District Court in Moscow
Possibly the most degrading and psychologically damaging tool used to brutalise inmates in Russia’s penal system is rape – by prison workers and other inmates.
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In recent years, a haul of footage depicting this tactic in graphic detail has been leaked by former prisoners, with videos reviewed by documenting the ordeals of several men who were tied down before being sexually abused.
One clip showed an inmate screaming in pain as another man violently forced a mop handle between his legs, while another male prisoner was strapped to a bed with his legs spread, allowing others to assault him incessantly.
Activists who spoke with former inmates in one particular facility named OTB-1, a prison hospital located in the Saratov region close to Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, said officers in Russia’s Federal Prison Service (FSIN) and FSB security agency oversaw a ‘conveyor belt’ of sexual abuse.
Gangs were allegedly employed as orderlies and caretakers at the hospital to provide cover for them if their presence was questioned – but their actual job was the routine sexual abuse of inmates as part of a ‘criminal conspiracy’ operating within the jail.
The rapes were filmed, with footage sent back to the FSIN and FSB so it could be archived and then used as blackmail.
Besides the Saratov region, clips of such heinous abuse have been recorded in prisons located in the regions of Vladimir, Irkutsk, Belgorod, Transbaikal and Kamchatka.
Horrifying footage details the sexual abuse, rape and torture of male inmates inside Russia’s prisons under the watchful eye of guards
Videos reveal at least five inmates being urinated on, raped by male inmates, and violated with blunt objects inside a prison hospital in the Saratov region
The footage was leaked by a former inmate who says he was tasked with archiving it so it could be used to blackmail the prisoners into becoming abusers themselves
Activists say the campaign of abuse was carried out with the knowledge and approval of senior members of Russia’s prison service and FSB spy agency
Besides rape, regular beatings by guards are commonplace in many of Russia’s prisons.
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But the brute force is also calculated to be as degrading as possible while remaining contained so it can be hidden by clothing.
In one favoured method, the inmate is forced to bend face down over a table, with his arms restrained by officers.
They are then beaten mercilessly by a pair of officers from behind, who use special truncheons to strike the inmate on the legs and buttocks.
These rounded rubber devices typically do not cause extensive cuts, thereby limiting bleeding and making the punishment easy to cover up.
But they can still deliver considerable damage to the victim, particularly when used on such sensitive areas.
In one skin crawling clip from a prison in Yaroslavl unveiled by activists, an inmate – with the pseudonym Andrei Ivanov to conceal his identity – was badly beaten in this manner.
After being summoned on the pretence of a routine body search, Ivanov was thrown over the table in nothing but his underpants and ruthlessly lashed from behind.
Another clip showed guards dealing the same punishment to Georgian citizen Vazha Bochorishvili, with the grainy footage revealing how the inmate screamed and begged the guards to stop, all while they egged each other on and ordered the officers swinging the batons to continue ‘stronger’.
Inmates are seen stripped and standing against a wall ahead of a torture session
A victim known as Andrei Ivanov – not his real name – was shown in dark footage being held over a table and beaten with truncheons
Several officers held down the prisoner as others inflicted sharp blows with rubber truncheons on the legs and buttocks (pictured)
Inmates are typically sent back to their cells to lick their wounds with no medical treatment.
But in some cases, the beatings go too far, and in the case of Bochorishvili, can be fatal.
After his ordeal, Bochorishvili was hauled off the table and collapsed to the floor.
Guards ordered him to his feet but he remained curled up beside the table – which only prompted them to continue the punishment, but this time striking indiscriminately.
His badly bloodied body was thrown back into a cell, but he slipped into unconsciousness, such was the severity of his beating.
Bochorishvili was moved to a medical ward hours after guards realised he was unresponsive, but he died in a hospital bed weeks later.
His body was later returned to his family for burial – but without his internal organs.
Other inmates are instead subjected to revolting methods of torture in prison toilets.
In one shocking clip an inmate is seen forced onto his knees before having his head plunged into a toilet bowl.
A guard places his boot on the inmate’s back, forcing his head into the toilet and preventing him from pulling back.
The victim is then held in place while an officer flushes the toilet and effectively waterboards the struggling prisoner.
Moments later, the spluttering victim is hauled away and whipped, opening gaping wounds on his unprotected back, before being kicked to the floor where prison staff proceeded to urinate on him.
The torture is not just limited to prisons inside Russia.
Investigations conducted by various Ukrainian and international organisations have found extensive evidence of Russian-authored torture of Ukrainian citizens in occupied territories following the February 2022 invasion.
Plastic ties, which were allegedly used during torture, are seen lying on a broken chair in the basement of an office building in Kherson
A former police building in Kherson lies in ruin during Moscow’s occupation of the city. Ukrainian civilians were allegedly tortured in facilities like this by Russian soldiers
A makeshift detention building in Kherson, Ukraine, is marked with a Z pro-Putin symbol and ‘Russia’ spelt out in cyrillic script
The Reckoning Project, which records and verifies testimonies of crimes against humanity, has discovered evidence of war crimes at almost every detention site they have visited during the Russian occupation of Ukraine
The investigations have found the use of torture by Russian forces was a matter of routine, used against members of the Ukrainian military, police or government officials to force them to collaborate, and against civilians to intimidate them or to extract information.
In one of the most extreme cases, a man who served as a military volunteer in Mariupol before he was captured told how Russians kidnapped him from his jail cell and held him for five months during which he was tortured – sometimes for days on end.
The man recalled being bound, gagged, beaten, strangled with electrical wire until he passed out, then doused in water to wake him up only so the torment could start over again.
He said: ‘On the third day, I asked my tormentors … [to] finish me off, because I didn’t have anything to tell them.
‘[One of the torturers] called one of his supervisors [and] showed me to him through the phone. The one on the phone just nodded and said nothing.’
The man expected to be killed, but his jailors ignored the order and carried on abusing him.
‘They kept torturing me,’ he said. ‘My hands were turned back and shackled. I was laid on the floor face down, strangled with wire from the extension cable.
‘When I started to lose consciousness, they said: ”Wait. It’s too early. You haven’t gone through all seven circles of hell yet”.’
Other inmates recalled hearing their fellow prisoners being raped in the next room, and were themselves brutally punished if they attempted to aid a prisoner during a beating.
An inmate at one makeshift Kherson jail in the early days of the war said he was beaten so badly that he ‘had blood in my urine for a month and a half’.