Appearing before a Russian court on Tuesday by American journalist Evan Gershkovichaccused of espionage represents a rare break from his isolation in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, a symbol of oppression since Soviet times.
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This notorious Moscow internment camp has housed a long list of well-known personalities within its walls and is used by the Russian Security Services (FSB) to keep prisoners in near-complete isolation.
“It’s a frozen prison. They isolate you as much as possible from the outside world and from other prisoners, except for your cellmate,” testifies Igor Roudnikov, a former prisoner and journalist.
“It’s hard to describe… Imagine being with the same man all the time, in an eight-square-meter cell, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” continued Mr. Roudnikov, who is in the Nearby passed 10 months in Lefortovo in 2017 and 2018.
AFP spoke to Mr Roudnikov, as well as to lawyers, activists and families of detainees to get a glimpse of life in the prison.
Photo Alexander NEMENOV / AFP
Inside this pale yellow 19th-century building, two people walk daily in a room the size of a cell but with an opening in place of the roof.
“Even a married couple in love can’t spend that much time together, so picture people who have just met,” says Mr. Roudnikov.
For him, this is a “means of psychological pressure,” as is the artificial light and constant noise in the building.
The sound of Lefortovo
Much of Lefortovo’s four-story internal structure is metal—stairs, doors, floors, and carriages—so the building “clicks and clatters” constantly.
The system that prevents inmates from seeing anyone as they move around the prison amplifies the noise. To warn others to stay away, the guards snap their fingers loudly or jingle their keys as they lead the prisoners.
“It’s the special noise of Lefortovo that you hear when you walk through the corridors,” explains Maria Eismont, a lawyer who regularly visits the Moscow establishment.
However, all AFP interviewees acknowledged that material conditions in this FSB-controlled facility are better than in other Russian prisons.
Photo Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP
Lefortowo is an unusual institution, since well-known personalities are investigated for serious crimes such as “high treason”, “terrorism” or “espionage”.
Former US Marine Paul Whelan was imprisoned there in 2018 before being sentenced to 16 years for espionage and transferred to another prison.
In Soviet times, Lefortovo briefly hosted the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Mathias Rust, a German aviator who made a surprise landing near Red Square in 1987.
Across Russia, the name of Lefortovo immediately conjures up memories of Stalin’s purges, and according to NGO Memorial, it was rare for prisoners to escape the compound alive at the time.
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“Completely Closed World”
Times have changed, however, and lawyers interviewed by AFP have not heard of physical abuse in recent years.
“It’s a very strict but decent prison,” summarizes Ms. Eismont, who is currently defending three clients detained in Lefortovo.
“The most important thing is that people are cut off from the outside world as much as possible,” she adds.
Ksenia Mironova, a 25-year-old journalist with the media outlet Helpdesk, recalls being ridiculed for asking to buy a phone call loan for her jailed partner Ivan Safronov.
“They said to me: + How can you be so naive as to expect phone calls? +”.
Mr Safronov, a respected journalist, spent two years in Lefortovo before being sentenced to 22 years in a penal colony for “high treason”.
The handwritten letters have become an important means of communication for the couple.
Ms. Mironova recalls being “drowned in tears” after receiving a letter from Mr. Safronov for the first time. “I used to always have this letter with me, in my pocket.”
Then, in Mr. Safronov’s second year in Lefortovo, the letters stopped. The investigators, who read each letter and decide whether to send it or not, have obviously made a choice to keep it.
Ms Mironova says she felt “weird” walking down the street near Lefortovo, so close to Mr Safronov, who was “in a completely closed world”.