“Are You a Bitch Yet?” FSB Makes New Threats to Framed and Tortured Antifascist Viktor Filinkov

“Are You a Bitch Yet?”: Man Accused in The Network Case Talks about Mores of FSB Officers
OVD Info
April 24, 2018

Viktor Filinkov. Photo courtesy of his wife, Alexandra, and OVD Info

On April 20, 2018, the Russian Investigative Committee officially declined to open a criminal case on the basis of a complaint filed by Viktor Filinkov, one of the young men accused in The Network case, who alleged he had been tortured by FSB officers. Moreover, these very same FSB officers are permitted to visit him in remand prison. OVD Info has published, below, the account Filinkov gave to his lawyer of how the secret service officers who tortured him now talk to him.

At around eleven o’clock on April 19, 2018, I was escorted from my cell in the supermax wing of Gorelovo Remand Prison and taken to a holding area before being led out of the prison, where I was handed over to two men, one of whom I recognized as Konstantin Bondarev, a special agent in the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Office of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). I have known Special Agent Bondarev since January 23, 2018, when he supervised my apprehension at Pulkovo Airport and then, along with other local FSB officers, subjected me to physical and emotional violence for approximately thirty hours while also depriving me of rest, sleep, and food.

When I was escorted out of the holding area, one of the FSB officers meeting me ordered me to put my my hands behind my back, which he handcuffed extremely tightly. I was placed in a silver-colored Škoda. Before putting me in the car, Special Agent Bondarev asked me a question.

“Well, well, Filinkov. Are you a bitch yet?”

“What’s the point of your question?” I asked.

“You’re the point, fuckhead!” Special Agent Bondarev answered aggressively.

He then got behind the wheel of the car. I was put in the backseat. After a while, the car drove through the gates of Remand Prison No. 6. During the entire ride to St. Petersburg, the FSB officers said nothing to me, but I was genuinely afraid that, at any moment, they could drive me to a deserted place and subject me to violence.

We were on the road for about an hour. Finally, I was brought to the local FSB building and taken to the office of Investigator Klimov, where my defense attorney, Vitaly Cherkasov, was waiting for me.

Mr. Cherkasov and I had a one-on-one private conversation during which I informed him I was in a depressed state, since I had been forced to travel for a long time in the same car as Special Agent Bondarev, who had been negative and aggressive towards me, using criminal slang to threaten me with possible rape in Remand Prison No. 6.

In addition, I explained I had recognized Investigator Klimov as one of the officers who on January 24, 2018, after I was brought to the FSB building, had taken part in a prolonged attempt to coerce me mentally into signing a confession. I assume Investigator Klimov could see I had been beaten, and I also needed rest, sleep, water, and food.

It was on this basis that, when Investigator Klimov asked me whether I was willing to testify, I said I would not refuse to testify, but I was currently in a stressful state of mind due to my encounters with Special Agent Bondarev and Investigator Klimov, whom I did not trust, either. Moreover, I had been brought to the FSB building, which is linked in my mind with the torture and bullying I endured there on January 24 and January 25, 2018. For this reason, I told the investigator I could give detailed and thoughtful testimony only in Remand Prison No. 6, where I felt calmer and more secure. I put this explanation in writing in the comments section of the interrogation report.

The investigative procedure was thus completed. Investigator Klimov summoned guards, and two men in plain clothes wearing balaclavas over their heads entered his office. They handcuffed my hands behind my back. They led me out of the room and took me outside, where I was placed in the backseat of the silver-colored Škoda. Special Agent Bondarev was at the wheel.

On the way back to Gorelovo, the officers continued to pepper me with questions.

“Well, bitch, is your asshole raw yet?” Bondarev asked.

Then he said the following.

“Now I’m going to methodically drag you through the mud. Cherkasov is trying to make a name for himself, but you and Agora are all going to rot in prison, and you are to going to do your time in the Arctic Circle, in Murmansk or Karelia. Life taught you a lesson, and it gave you a chance. Do the guys in Remand Prison No. 6 know your lawyer defends LGBT?”

One of the special agents in the car responded, “He didn’t learn his lesson, apparently.”

“It didn’t get through his head, but it will get through his legs,” Bondarev replied.

“It will get through his asshole!” the other special agent added.

They laughed merrily after this remark.

I also remember that one of the special agents said, “You can find a good husband in Gorelovo.”

Bondarev and his colleagues insulted my human dignity, emotionally injured me in a profound way, and put me in a stressful state by saying these and other things. In addition to being humiliated, I finally realized that in the ranks of the local FSB off there are unworthy officers who employ prison notions for their own purposes in their attempts to pressure inmates.

Chatting with me in this vein, the FSB officers took around two hours to drive me back to the remand prison. We got in the car outside the local FSB building around 1:30 p.m. and arrived at Remand Prison No. 6 at 4:00 p.m. I kept track of the time on the clock in the car.*

After talking with the FSB special agents, I returned to my cell in a depressed state, and I was completely sweaty from the nervous atmosphere and heat in the car. My heart ached, I lost my appetite, I refused supper, and my psoriasis acted up due to the stress. When I combed my hair I felt psoriatic plaques on my head.

I take the threats made to me by Bondarev and his colleagues completely seriously. I am afraid for my safety, health, and life itself.

My verbal statement has been recorded faithfully, and I have read it over. I give my permission to publish it in the media.

* A directions search on Yandex Maps reveals that the drive from the local FSB building (4 Liteiny Prospect, Petersburg) to Remand Prison No. 6 in Gorelovo should take one hour and thirteen minutes, at most, if there are no traffic jams, and thirty-six minutes, at least, if the traffic is good and the driver takes the optimal route. This would suggest that Special Agent Konstantin Bondarev deliberately drove in circles for a long time in order to bully and threaten Mr. Filinkov. TRR

road to gorelovo

Thanks to George Losev for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

If you have not been following the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and related cases involving frame-ups, torture, and violent intimidation by the Russian police and secret services, please have a look at some of the recent articles I have published on these subjects.

Anna Tereshkina: At Viktor Filinkov’s Remand Extension Hearing

Anna Tereshkina
Facebook
March 21, 2018

I went to Viktor Filinkov’s court hearing, where his motion to have his remand in policy custody changed to house arrest was reviewed.

I arrived at the Dzerzhinsky District Courthouse by 10 a.m., already hungry although I had eaten breakfast. Outside the subway station, I bought a pasty and put it in my backpack.

It turned out there was no need to arrive fifteen minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin, because they kept everyone stewing for over an hour before starting.

I was able to draw my girlfriends as they languished in the stuffy court building.

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Then a tall, skinny court bailiff herded everyone to the end of the hallway. Viktor was brought in, and everyone raised their arms and focused the cameras on their smartphones. There was a round of applause.

I was somehow expecting a huge ovation, but then it hit me, mournfully, that there were not very many of us, something like fifteen to twenty people, I think. Or is that a lot? Or was every other person monkeying with his or her camera?

We were not let into the courtroom immediately.

Everything seemed quite dicey, as if at any minute they might never let us out of there.

My hands were shaking, so my only drawing of Viktor did not come out very legible.

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Viktor himself looked liked a man who had not lost hope.

I noticed his shoes were tied with strange laces. Were they fashioned from plastic bags, as he had described, or did someone give him white laces for the hearing?

The judge’s voice was unexpectedly kind and polite, like the voice of a school guidance counselor.

We were kicked out of the courtroom, of course, while the court deliberated whether to hold the hearing in chambers or not.

After waiting for an hour, I took out my pasty, which had gone cold.

The lanky bailiff was tormented. He would try and drive everyone away from the passage to the courtroom, the walls, and the doors. But the people who had come to the hearing reacted to him as if he were an annoying fly. The only thing that interested them were the big wooden doors and what has happening on the other side of them.

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I sketched the bailiff, wondering whether he beat his wife and kids.

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Finally, he called another bailiff, who had bangs and wore ordinary jeans instead of the trousers issued with his uniform. He stood by the door more calmly.

Suddenly, a fresh breeze wafted through the hallway. It was workers carrying furniture. Two massive wooden benches, a wardrobe, and a whole suite of judge’s thrones adorned with crests. One of them had no seat at all, as if its makers had wanted to use it as a toilet at the dacha.

The bailiff with the bangs got distracted and stepped away from the door. One of the workers immediately dashed to our coveted Courtroom No. 9, stuck his nose in the door, and loudly asked, “Can we bring in the wardrobe?”

A clerk in a gray dress came out and said they should wait until the hearing was over.

Yes, the hearing had long been underway, but we had not even been called into the courtroom and told the court had decided to hold the hearing in chambers.

People grumbled and wrote complaints.

Nastya showed me a book, The Suffering Middle Ages, which had a chapter about how, from the twelth to fourteenth centuries, law books were lavishly illustrated with giant penises.

The tall, nervous bailiff returned and once more herded everyone to the end of the hallway.

Viktor was brought out by the guards. The applause and shouts of support were louder than the first time.

The court had again recessed for deliberation. The workers finished their unloading, and stuffiness again reigned in the hallway. Someone brought juice, biscuits, and bananas.

The bailiff with the bangs immediately popped up, saying it was forbidden to eat in the courthouse. He was probably the hungriest of us all.

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For five minutes or so, no one did, in fact, eat anything, but then we passed around the biscuits, divvied up the bananas, and poured the juice into cups. The bailiff didn not feel like reminding us again, apparently, and he said nothing.

Viktor’s defense attorney Vitaly Cherkasov came out and said we would have to wait for at least another hour. We had been sitting there for four hours as it was.

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Many people left the courthouse to have a smoke and eat lunch, so they could come back later.

I left altogether because my brain had completely melted.

I was home when I read that, at 3:46 p.m., the court had ruled Viktor be kept in police custody until June 22.

I felt a sharp pang of the suffocating absurdity that nearly everyone has accepted. But no, I hope they haven’t.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Ms. Tereshkin for her kind permission to reproduce her drawing and publish a translation of her text here. All images © Anna Tereshkina, 2018. If you have not heard about the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case, you need to read the following articles and spread the word to friends, comrades, and journalists.

Ilya Kapustin: “They Said They Could Break My Legs and Dump Me in the Woods”

“They Said They Could Break My Legs and Dump Me in the Woods.” Petersburger Ilya Kapustin Recounts How FSB Officers Tortured Him
Yegor Skovoroda
Mediazona
January 27, 2018

Traces of handcuffs on Ilya Kapustin’s hands. Photo courtesy of his attorney and Mediazona

This week, FSB officers searched the homes of several Petersburg antifascists and anarchists. The searches were authorized by order of a Penza court. In October 2017, six activists were detained in Penza. One of them, Arman Sagynbayev, had lived for a time in Petersburg. They were charged with involvement in a terrorist network (Russian Criminal Code Article 205.4).

On January 24, 23-year-old antifascist Viktor Filinkov was detained at Pulkovo Airport in Petersburg. The following day it transpired he had been remanded to police custody as the member of a terrorist network and had “confessed the suspicions about him.” Filinkov recounted that after he was detained he had been beaten and tortured with an electric cattle prod, presumably by FSB officers.

“Most of all I was shocked by the burn marks on the hips from the taser (as Viktor assures me). During my long struggles against police lawlessness I have never seen such injuries, and I have over fifty torture and bullying convictions of police officers under my belt,” attorney Vitaly Cherkasov wrote on his Facebook page after visiting Filinkov in Petersburg’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 3.

On January 25, the security services searched at least two more flats. After one such visit, antifascist Igor Shiskin disappeared. Neither his loved ones nor his attorney have been able to find him. During her interrogation, Shishkin’s wife was asked about the movements or groups The Network (Set’) and November Fifth (5.11), and also asked whether she professed anarchist views. [Shiskin turned up at the same pretrial detention center on the evening of January 27—TRR.]

Ilya Kapustin was seized by masked secret service officers on the evening of January 25. The young man says he was tortured with an electric cattle prod while being asked questions about an aquaintance of his in Petersburg who had recently been arrested, the anarchist movement, and Penza, a city Kapustin has never visted. Mediazona presents his firsthand account of torture, his interrogation as a witness, and the search conducted by officers from the FSB’s Petersburg and Leningrad Region Office.

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It so happened I am acquainted with a person who was recently arrested in Petersburg. I am an industrial climber, and I knew him from work. I telephoned him with a job officer right when he was being detained, which definitely caused what happened.

When I was returning home in the evening and was quite close to my house, five or so men in black uniforms and masks attacked me from different directions. They pushed me on the ground and dragged me into a minivan while kicking me. I tried to call for help. I yelled, but to no avail. I was knocked down on the floor of the vehicle, and the men searched me while continuing to kick me. I was handcuffed me very tightly, so tightly I still have cuts on my hands.

The vehicle drove off, and I was interrogated. When I did not know the answer to a question, when I did not understand who or what they were talking about, they shocked me with a tazer near my groin or the side of my stomach. They shocked me so I would say some acquaintance of mine or another was planning to do something dangerous. There were questions about whether I was a member of certain organizations, where I had traveled, and whether I had been to Penza. They asked me to tell them details about the lives of my acquaintances.

So, from time to time they poked me with the taser. At some point, one of them said they could dump me in the woods somewhere and break my legs. I was looking forward to this moment when it would all be over, because they had tortured me for such a long time it was quite unbearable.

Traces of tasers burns on Ilya Kapustin’s body. Photo courtesy of his attorney and Mediazona

I was in the vehicle from roughly nine-thirty in the evening to one-thirty in the morning, when we arrived, apparently at an FSB office. When they took me out, they pulled a hood over my head and forced me to look down, and I could not figure out where we were, but later, when they took me home to search my flat, I guessed that it was a corner on Shpalernaya Street of the FSB building [whose main entrance is on Liteiny Avenue in downtown Petersburg—TRR]. I saw just as many secret service people in the office, only they were not wearing and were dressed in plain clothes. An investigator questioned me for something like an hour. Other secret service guys would sometimes stop by. One of them told me that if I did not want a second round, I should answer all the questions.

Then we went to the flat where we live, and there they let us read a search warrant issued by a court in Penza. During the search, I refused to switch on my laptop and telephone. That made them act very stridently. They threatened to hide a grenade and come back in a couple of days and find it in a search. Ultimately, they confiscated my laptop, telephone, and hard drive.

When they left, I went to the emergency room and documented the fact I had been beaten. I was issued a certificate in which all my injuries are listed. I am now looking for a lawyer to file a complaint. I am not mixed up in anything, but out of the blue I was tortured for several hours.

Translated by the Russian Reader