The Kuibyshevsky District Court of Irkutsk passed a sentence on five prisoners who tortured the convicted Kezhik Ondar with a boiler. This is reported by the publication "People of Baikal" with reference to the lawyer Dmitry Dmitriev.
The “developers” (as the prisoners collaborating with the administration of the colony are called) were found guilty of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm and violent acts of a sexual nature. Nikolai Kurbatov and Ilya Gagarin received 11 years in prison. Alexey Slavgorodsky, Sergey Nepomnyashchikh and Anton Olennikov – 10 years each. In addition, each of them will have to pay compensation to Ondar in the amount of 500 thousand rubles.
“At first they defended the employees of the pre-trial detention center, they said that they decided to torture Ondar themselves. Then Gagarin said that he was forced to do it by operatives. Behind him, Kurbatov confirmed this. Nepomnyashchikh generally stated that he himself was a victim of violence. None of the “developers” fully admitted their guilt,” said Dmitriev.
A resident of Tyva, Kezhik Ondar, who was convicted in 2019 for stealing a horse, was serving his sentence in the Angarsk IK-15. After the riot that took place there in April 2020, he was transferred to SIZO-1. There, Kezhik was demanded that he slander himself for his involvement in the arson of the colony and the murder of a man. Kezhik refused, and then they began to torture him. He was tied up, hung up, doused with water, beaten with electric current. In addition, they put a boiler in his anus, turned it on and it exploded in it.
In September 2022, Ondar was released. According to the lawyer, he returned to Tuva and works as a watchman at a shepherd's camp.
In January last year, the Investigative Committee opened 17 criminal cases on the facts of torture and sexual abuse, which were subjected to prisoners of SIZO-1 in Irkutsk. A stream of complaints about torture and rape in Irkutsk colonies and pre-trial detention centers began to come after the “riot” in the Angarsk IK-15 in the spring of 2020. Then, about a hundred prisoners were taken from IK-15 to Irkutsk SIZO-1 and Angarsk SIZO-6, where some of them were brutally tortured and raped, demanding to take the blame for organizing the "rebellion" or to give other testimony necessary to the security forces.
In total, about 30 people were recognized as victims in the joint case of torture in the pre-trial detention center and colonies of the Irkutsk region. Human rights activists insisted that in fact there were many more victims, and many employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service who were involved in bullying were never punished and still work in the prison system.
This is the first ever criminal case on mass torture of a sexualized nature in the institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service, and it has not yet reached the court. Human rights activists said that during the investigation, many victims became frightened and began to withdraw their words, as they were under pressure.
On December 8, 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded the rank of Major General to Leonid Sagalakov, under whose leadership the “torture conveyor” began to work in full force in the region.