On June 14, 40-year-old arrestee Anatoly Berezikov died in a special detention center in Rostov-on-Don. This was reported by Mediazona with reference to the lawyer Irina Gak.
According to Gak, law enforcement officers came to Berezikov’s apartment on May 11, 2023 and conducted an “unauthorized search during which they beat him” and then drew up a report on him for disobedience to law enforcement officers (Part 1 Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code). The court sent him under arrest for 10 days.
The lawyer believes that the man could have been arrested for posting flyers in the city of the Ukrainian project “I want to live”, which accepts appeals from Russians to surrender.
After serving his sentence, Berezikov did not leave the detention center – he was again sentenced to administrative arrest for 10 days on the charge of disorderly conduct (part 1 of Article 20.1 of the CAO).
Berezikov told Gak that before the trial police officers took him out of town, where they tortured him with electric shocks and demanded that he refuse the services of a lawyer. Gak noted that she recorded the traces of torture on Berezikov’s body. On 31 May he was sent under arrest for the third time, under which article – is not specified.
According to the lawyer, Berezikov complained about the pressure, violence and threats from law enforcement officers at all meetings with her. For example, he reported that law enforcement officers threatened to send him to the war in Ukraine and said that “they would hide him so that no one would find him”. On June 15, Berezikov was supposed to get out.
Two days before that the lawyer came to visit the man, but she was told that he was not in the special detention center. The next day, 14 June, according to the lawyer, she saw an ambulance in the yard, in which Berezikov’s body was brought.
