Tahirjon Bakiev, an inmate with Central Asian roots who was tortured in a Siberian penitentiary, has been found dead at the correctional colony No. 6 in the Irkutsk region.
Bakiev's sister, Nargiz Bakieva, told RFE/RL that the prison's administration called her on February 6, asking to take her brother's body, saying he hanged himself.
In his last letter from prison, Bakiev asked "all indifferent people" to help him to deal with the consequences of torture he faced while in custody, stressing he did not want "to die here" as if he killed "himself."
In February last year, a court in Irkutsk sentenced a former prison warden and two of his associates to five years in prison after convicting them of involvement in the beating, torture, and rape of Bakiev in January 2021.
Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) said in March 2021 that probes had also been launched against six inmates who allegedly tortured Bakiev, adding that it had yet to be confirmed that the incidents were motivated by ethnic reasons.
Physicians who treated Bakiev, who was serving a seven-year sentence for gun theft, said he sustained severe injuries after he was raped with a mop handle and beaten by the inmates.
Bakiev said the men who tortured him desecrated a Koran while he was lying on a cell floor bleeding. He was then kept under a cell bed for two days. The penitentiary's administration then prevented him from sharing his ordeal with his wife, Anastasia Bakieva, and other relatives by not allowing him to call home for more than a month.
After Gulagu.net human rights group intervened, Bakiev was rushed to a civilian hospital where he had surgery. An investigation was subsequently launched into his torture.
Gulagu.net’s founder, Vladimir Osechkin, told RFE/RL at the time that some of the inmates had confessed to beating and torturing other inmates and testified that they were doing so on the commands of guards.
Bakiev initially served his term at correctional colony No. 15 in the city of Angarsk in the Irkutsk region. In 2020, inmates of that penitentiary staged a large riot, after which many were transferred to other prisons in the region.
Human rights groups cited some of the inmates as saying that they faced beatings and torture after they were transferred to other prisons, where guards used other inmates who agreed “to cooperate” with the administration to force them to confess in organization of the riot.