The Network defendants in the courtroom in Penza. Photo by Yevgeny Malyshev. Courtesy of 7X7
Parents Demand Release of Network Defendants from Remand Prison Due to Coronavirus
Ekaterina Malysheva
7X7
April 1, 2020
Parents of the young men convicted in the Penza portion of the Network Case have demanded their children be transferred to house arrest due to the coronavirus. They have written appeals to this effect to the president of the Russian Federation, the prosecutor general, the heads of the Investigate Committee and the Federal Penitentiary Service, and the commissioner for human rights, as reported to 7X7 by Svetlana Pchelintseva, the mother of Dmitry Pchelintsev, one of the convicted men.
The parents also demanded that safety measures be put in place at detention facilities. They argue that being in remand prison during the COVID-19 outbreak is life-threatening. Of all the quarantine regulations, the parents say, only the ban on visits from relatives has been enforced at the remand prison since March 16.
“Not only is there no guarantee of protection from infection at the remand prison, but it is simply impossible,” the letter says. “Our sons are denied the right to remain alive during the global coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, the issue of safeguarding the health of people confined to detention facilities is not on the agenda today. And, of course, qualified specialized medical care, especially involving the hospitalization of inmates from remand prisons and penal colonies in civilian medical facilities, is not feasible. It is a myth.”
The parents claim that no preventive measures have been enacted at the Penza Remand Prison: disinfection and sanitation procedures have not been carried out, and employees don’t have masks. The greatest danger, according to the authors of the appeal, are the detention facility’s employees themselves, who are potential carriers of the virus. The parents note that reducing the number of inmates in the federal penitentiary system would help prevent disease.
The parents point out that Vladimir Putin said nothing about measures to protect inmates during his address to the Russian people about the coronavirus outbreak. According to the parents, none of the regulations on laboratory testing for COVID-19 defends the rights of people in detention facilities. The authors of the letter claim that inmates will not be tested or treat if they are infected.
Two of the young men convicted in the Network Case, the parents recall, have contracted tuberculosis in remand prison. This puts them at high risk during a pandemic and could be “tantamount to a death sentence.”
On March 30, the Penza regional office of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service reported that in addition to the ban on visits to inmates in the system, visitors and employees with high temperatures and everyone who had been abroad in the last fourteen days were categorically prohibited from entering their facilities.
The office’s press service reported that a set of sanitary and anti-epidemic (preventive) was being organized and implemented at its facilities. It noted that if prisoners were suspected of having the coronavirus disease, the management of the regional office would hospitalize them in health care facilities.
The lawyers of the men convicted in the Network Case continue to visit their clients at Penza Remand Prison No. 1. According to them, conditions at the detention facility make it impossible to ensure the health and safety of prisoners during the epidemic. The lawyers are not allowed to bring certain personal protection gear into the facility. For example, latex medical gloves are not on the list of permitted items.
The lawyers have seen a mask only on the prison employee who inspects people at the entrance to the facility—the other employees were not wearing masks. According to the lawyers, the parents got the runaround in response to their previous complaints and appeals.
The last letter they sent, on February 5, was a request to Russian Federal Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov to investigate all the circumstances in the Network Case and launch a criminal case based on allegations that their children had been tortured by officers in the FSB’s Penza regional office.
In a response dated March 10, the prosecutor general’s office advised the parents to appeal (during the appeals phase of the main verdict in the Network Case) the admissibility of the evidence gathered. All the defendants and their defense lawyers have filed appeals with the Military Appeals Court in Moscow.
The parents organized a solidarity group of relatives against political repression, the Parents Network in spring 2018. In early November 2019, the relatives of defendants in several high-profile cases followed their example by uniting in the movement Mothers Against Political Repression. The movement has its own website, as well as group pages on Telegram and Facebook.
On February 10, the defendants in the Penza portion of the Network Trial were sentenced to terms in prison from six to eighteen years.
Translated by the Russian Reader. If you have not been following the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case aka the Network Case, and other recent cases involving frame-ups, torture, and violent intimidation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and other arms of the Russian police state, read and share the articles I have posted on these subjects.
- “Pornofilmy, ‘This Will Pass,'” 1 March 2020
- “At the Network Trial in Petersburg,” 25 February 2020
- “Yevgenia Litvinova: Stop the Crackdown in Crimea,” 18 February 2020
- “The Network Case in Context,” 12 February 2020
- “86 Years in Prison for 7 Defendants in Network Case,” 10 February 2020
- “Two Network Case Defendants Married in Prison,” 29 January 2020
- “Viktor Filinkov: ‘It’s As If You Disappear—Only the Pain Remains,’” 21 January 2019
- “David Graeber on the Network Case,” 20 January 2020
- “‘My Statement Has Been Recorded Accurately (February 1–3, 2020),” 28 December 2019
- “18 Years in Prison for Being Tortured by the FSB,” 26 December 2019
- “The Second Anniversary,” 20 October 2019
- “‘Hi, I’m Married,’” 14 August 2019
- “Ivan Davydov: The New Greatness Trial,” 12 July 2019
- “Guided Tour of a Torture Chamber,” 11 July 2019
- “They Are Who They Are,” 10 June 2019
- “Vocalese (The Network Trials),” 6 June 2019
- “Yana Teplitskaya: Can Torture Be Endured?” 3 June 2019
- “The Network Trials: Pinning the ‘Code’ on the Defendants,” 22 May 2019
- “My Generation,” 6 May 2019
- “Lie Still, Bitch!” 26 April 2019
- “Crossing Jordan: Day Three of the Network Trial,” 17 April 2019
- “Network Trial Begins in Petersburg,” 9 April 2019
- “FSB May Haved Used Neo-Nazi Provocateur to Frame Network Suspects,” 1 February 2019
- “Jenya Kulakova: A New Year of Sorts,” 18 January 2019
- “No Amnesty for ‘Terrorists,’” 15 January 2019
- “Relentless Repression in Russia: Why Londoners Are Demonstrating on January 19,” 14 January 2019
- “Solo,” 12 January 2019
- “Convoyed,” 31 October 2018
- “How the FSB Tortures Detainees: Stories of the Victims,” 28 October 2018
- “No Justice, No Peace: Petersburg’s Kangaroo Courts Revisited,” 21 October 2018
- “Shakursky and Pchelintsev Indicted for Organizing ‘Terrorist Community,’” 11 September 2018
- “Arman Sagynbayev: I Was Tortured by the FSB,” 8 September 2018
- “Yana Teplitskaya: Wonderland,” 6 September 2018
- “Network: Parents versus the FSB,” 2 August 2018
- “Is Maxim Shulgin an ‘Extremist’?” 26 July 2018
- “Moscow City Court Affirms Anna Pavlikova’s Remand in Custody,” 26 July 2018
- “Is Lydia Bainova an ‘Extremist’?” 24 July 2018
- “Anna Pavlikova: Enemy of the Putinist State?” 22 July 2018
- “A Funny Thing Happened in Pryamukhino,” 20 July 2018
- “Two More Suspects Detained in Network Case,” 6 July 2018
- “Petersburg Court Bailiffs Attack Reporter at Network Case Hearing,” 20 June 2018
- “Anna Tereshkina: At the Court Hearing,” 20 June 2018
- “Nikolai Boyarshinov: I Hope One Day We Can Say the FSB Has Been Banned,” 12 June 2018
- “Lemmy Kilmister vs. Vladimir Putin,” 19 May 2018
- “Brazil,” 18 May 2018
- “This Is What Antifascism Looks Like,” 13 May 2018
- “May Day in Petersburg: ‘Your Torture Won’t Kill Our Ideas,’” 2 May 2018
- “Riot Cops Raid Punk Rock in Barnaul: ‘Freaks, Not Patriots,” 29 April 2018
- “Hug Your Son and We’ll Open Fire,” 27 April 2018
- “Denis Lebedev’s Suicide Note,” 26 April 2018
- “‘Are You a Bitch Yet?’ FSB Makes New Threats to Framed and Tortured Antifascist Viktor Filinkov,” 26 April 2018
- “Suicide Invoice,” 25 April 2018
- “Zoya Svetova: Interview with Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission Members Yana Teplitskaya and Yekaterina Kosarevskaya,” 23 April 2018
- “TV Party Tonight!” 21 April 2018
- “Valery Pshenichny: Tortured, Then Murdered,” 19 April 2018
- “They Are Not Terrorists! The Terrorists at the FSB Torture People,” 16 April 2018
- “FSB and NTV Pressure Mother of Man Accused in ‘Terrorist’ Frame-Up,” 12 April 2018
- “A New Face in Hell: Yuli Boyarshinov,” 12 April 2018
- “Wife of Tortured Antifascist Seeks Asylum in Finland,” 11 April 2018
- “The FSB’s Tall Tales,” 10 April 2018
- “Families of Penza-Petersburg Terrorists Form Committee,” 9 April 2018
- “Extremism Inside Out,” 30 March 2018
- “Search and Intimidate,” 29 March 2018
- “Solidarity? (The Case of the Penza and Petersburg Antifascists),” 24 March 2018
- “Anna Tereshkina: At Viktor Filinkov’s Remand Extension Hearing,” 23 March 2018
- “Ping, Ping, Ping: The Remand Extension Hearing of the Penza ‘Terrorists,’” 20 March 2018
- “Tortured Petersburg Antifascist Viktor Filinkov Transferred to Remand Prison in Leningrad Region,” 17 March 2018
- “Svyatoslav Rechkalov: ‘They Proceeded to Pull Down My Trousers, Threatening to Shock Me in the Groin,’” 15 March 2018
- “They Jump on Anything That Moves, Part 3: The Case of the New Greatness Movement,” 15 March 2018
- “The Horrorshow Continues: Svyatoslav Rechkalov Tortured in Moscow,” 15 March 2018
- “The Rowdies Have to Be Apprehended Legally, So We Can Have a Celebration in the City on March 18, not Bedlam,” 15 March 2018
- “Ilya Kapustin: ‘When the Stamp Thudded in My Passport, It Was Like a Huge Weight Had Been Lifted from My Shoulders,’” 13 March 2018
- “Your Husband Safely Made the Flight to Minsk after We Abducted Him in Petersburg,” 2 March 2018
- “‘FSB Officers Always Get Their Way!’” 28 February 2018
- ‘The Case of the Anarchists: Disappearances, Torture, Frame-Up (11 AM, February 15, 2018, Moscow),” 14 February 2018
- “The Strange Investigation of a Strange Subway Attack,” 12 February 2018
- “Arrested Penza Antifascists Talk about Torture in Remand Prison,” 10 February 2018
- “Solidarity with Persecuted Russian Antifascists and Anarchists in NYC and Minneapolis,” 7 February 2018
- “Ilya Kapustin: ‘They Said They Could Break My Legs and Dump Me in the Woods,’” 31 January 2018
- “The Penza ‘Terrorism’ Case,” 30 January 2018
- “Breaking Bad with the FSB,” 29 January 2018
- “How ‘Stability’ Has Really Been Achieved in Russia,” 29 January 2018
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