New Socialism movement, was given a five- In October, Maksim Ivankin, sentenced to year suspended sentence and an extortionate 13 years’ imprisonment for alleged fine for purported “calls to mass participation in a fictitious “terrorist” disturbances” and dissemination of organization named Network, told his lawyers “knowingly false information”. He had that he had “confessed” to a double murder criticized the authorities, including their under torture while being transferred to a response to Covid-19, and planned peaceful penitentiary in another region. protests. Smuggled graphic videos of inmates’ Mikhail Iosilevich, an activist from Nizhnii torture, including rape, in Saratov prison Novgorod, was falsely accused of cooperation hospital and other penal institutions were with an “undesirable organization” and made public in October by activists from the threatening a witness, and spent over six Gulagu.net group. In response to widespread months in pretrial detention. He was released media coverage and a public outcry, the in August under restrictions pending trial. His authorities initiated criminal investigations trial started in December. and sacked some prison officials. Threats Siberian shaman Aleksandr Gabyshev, who against the whistle-blower who procured the had vowed in 2019 to “purge" President footage, Sergei Savelyev, forced him to leave Putin from the Kremlin, was violently arrested Russia. by some 50 police officers at his home in ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES Yakutsk. In July, a court confined him indefinitely to a psychiatric hospital for There were new reports of enforced compulsory treatment. In October, he was disappearances, particularly from Chechnya. moved to a specialized psychiatric institution The fate and whereabouts of Salman in Novosibirsk, thousands of kilometres from Tepsurkayev, moderator of Telegram channel his home. 1ADAT, remained unknown. A critic of the TORTURE AND OTHER ILL-TREATMENT authorities, he was seen being tortured in a video that was anonymously published after Torture and other ill-treatment in custody his disappearance in 2020. In October, the remained endemic and prosecutions of ECtHR found Russia responsible for his perpetrators rare. arbitrary, unacknowledged detention and Those arrested during pro-Navalny rallies torture, and for the failure to effectively complained of inhuman and degrading investigate his torture. conditions in detention, including severe FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND BELIEF overcrowding at the Sakharovo detention facility for migrants, outside Moscow, and Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses elsewhere. intensified after the organization’s arbitrary Although several criminal investigations designation as “extremist” in 2017, with were initiated into multiple allegations of intrusive home searches and criminal cases torture, including rape, of prisoners in Irkutsk initiated across the country and in occupied region in 2020, they were stalled with victims Crimea. At least 105 people were convicted, and witnesses complaining of threats and with those imprisoned sentenced to intimidation. increasingly long terms. In February, brothers Salekh Magamadov In October, a court in Astrakhan sentenced and Ismail Isaev were abducted by police in Olga Ivanova to three-and-a-half-years’ Nizhnii Novgorod and taken to Chechnya imprisonment, and Rustam Diarov, Sergei where they were remanded on false charges Klikunov and Evgenii Ivanov to eight years’ of aiding an armed group. They complained imprisonment, the longest sentences issued of torture and other ill-treatment, but the to Jehovah’s Witnesses yet. Chechen authorities refused to open a criminal investigation. Amnesty International Report 2021/22 313