PRISON OFFICIALS FIRED OVER TORTURE CLAIMS

MOSCOW Russian authorities said on Wednesday they had fired five senior prison officials and opened a slew of criminal investigations into alleged torture and sexual assaults at a jail in the Saratov region.

The authorities acted after a prisoner rights group, Gulagu.net, began publishing what it said was graphic video evidence of orchestrated sadism at the prison, located around 700 kilometres southeast of Moscow.

It said it had received a massive leak of documents, photos and videos proving that hundreds of people across the prison system had been tortured and raped by other inmates directed by prison officials.

Vladimir Osechkin, founder of Gulagu.net, told Reuters that the prison abuses were taking place in many different parts of the country.

“A system of torture has been and is still operational,” said Osechkin.