Details have been established regarding the last weeks of the life of prisoner Vazha Bochorishvili, who served his sentence in IK-1 of the UFSIN in the Yaroslavl region of Russia and died there, in the colony, within the walls of the prison hospital in May 2017.
This death was a bad omen for the entire Yaroslavl UFSIN: shortly after it, the first video of torture leaked from the dungeons of the colony – against prisoner Yevgeny Makarov – and the first criminal cases were initiated against the employees of the colony. To date, 10 such records have already been published, criminal cases have been initiated against more than 30 employees, seven of which have gone as far as sentencing. And this is not the limit: now the lawyers of the “Public Verdict”*, who are conducting all these investigations, insist on bringing to justice people who did not directly participate in the torture, but calmly covered it up and prolonged the suffering of prisoners with their silence, notes NOVAYA GAZETA.
Very often, human rights defenders are asked what guides people who give them videos of torture in prison. And often human rights activists simply shrug their shoulders: well, probably, the human psyche can no longer endure this.
Perhaps it was the terrible, three-week death of Vazha Bochorishvili that became such a trigger for someone.
Novaya wrote back in 2017 that the convict Vazha Bochorishvili was tortured and subsequently died within the walls of Yaroslavl IK-1. We learned about this from other prisoners who were also tortured.
Last week, the head of the “torture” IK-1 in the city of Yaroslavl was sent on vacation, from which he will not return to work. But who is responsible for the torture and death of prisoners?
All we knew then was that there was a prisoner, Vazha, who had been transferred to Yaroslavl a little earlier. Knowing the harsh rules of the colony, at first the relatives sent a lawyer to Vazha once a week: Bochorishvili did not shine with health and the relatives hoped that since he was under a lawyer’s cap, they would not be too hard on him. The lawyer visited Bochorishvili for several months, and all this time everything was in order with him. And Vazha’s relatives decided to remove the lawyer’s observation – and then, as if it were a sin, inspections took place in the colony, during which Vazha was severely punished on the desk in the educational work class and treated with truncheons. After the “measures” he was thrown into the ShIZO, and 25 days later he died.
On the fact of the death of a prisoner in the colony, a criminal case was initiated on duty, which, however, was soon terminated “due to the absence of a crime event.” The examination found that “the onset of the death of citizen Bochorishvili was due to the nature and severity of his long-term illness, namely decompensated cirrhosis of the liver.” It seemed that this was the end of his fate.
But in the summer of 2021, another video leaked from the colony, recorded on the camera of a portable video recorder of one of the jailers: the prisoner Bochorishvili was tortured on it. And this video revived the criminal case on the fact of his death.
This is how the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service comments on the video of torture in the Yaroslavl colony. And the chiefs remain free. We publish new scary videos
In this recording, we see how he, standing in his shorts, surrounded by more than a dozen jailers, is offered to undergo a personal search procedure: sit down and spread his buttocks. Body searches, a standard procedure allowed by the internal regulations of the colony, can indeed be carried out if there is reason to believe that the prisoner is keeping prohibited items with him. However, in the video we can see a woman standing among colleagues – as we can assume, this is the prison paramedic Kashtaeva Yulia Mikhailovna, who is holding an anal dilator in her hands, –
and the regulations just do not allow the presence of a woman when examining a male prisoner. As well as the use of an anal dilator.
We see that Vazha warns the jailers about his poor health, and also that he has serious problems with the gastrointestinal tract:
— How do you go to the toilet? Have you already gone to the toilet before this? the jailer asks him.
“I don’t even eat… I eat bread because I can’t go…” replies Bochorishvili.
After the prisoner refuses to spread his buttocks in the presence of a woman, the colony officers force him to lie on a desk, take off his underpants and begin to beat with rubber sticks indiscriminately: on the thighs, on the buttocks, at some point, when Bochorishvili is turned to face his tormentors, already on belly, and on the penis.
After the video was published, the Investigative Committee for the Yaroslavl Region resumed the criminal case regarding the death of Bochorishvili. As part of the investigation into the procedure for his torture, the investigation ordered a new medical examination. Documents relating to the last days of the life of the prisoner, including the initial examination, dated 2017, were examined. Now in the hands of the lawyers of the Public Verdict there is a document that unfolds the circumstances of the death of Vazha Bochorishvili in a slightly different light.
As follows from this document, on April 12, 2017, Vazha Bochorishvili, who was crucified on a desk and received “at least 30 blows to the buttocks with a rubber stick”, was sent to solitary confinement after the end of the execution.
Public Verdict lawyer Irina Biryukova insists that this was done on purpose in order to hide Bochorishvili’s condition after the experience from other prisoners. But we cannot know this for certain, we can only know that a medical examination, carried out much later, established that he had “extensive cyanotic hematomas on the skin of the lumbar region with a transition to the anterior abdominal wall, on both buttocks, penis, scrotum” . (By the way, the state of the penis and scrotum of the prisoner Bochorishvili is given great attention in this medical report. “Special means are used with a number of restrictions, according to one of which it is not allowed to hit a person with a special stick on the genitals,” experts point out. Explanations of the jailers , as follows from the materials of the case, boil down to the fact that Bochorishvili himself is to blame for getting hit in the scrotum: he spun during the beating, “and I already made a swinging motion with my hand.” Well, in general, “the blows had a relaxing character.”)
It was in this approximately state – with extensive bluish hematomas on different parts of the body – that the prisoner Bochorishvili was placed in the punishment cell.
According to the order of the Ministry of Justice, on weekdays, prison doctors are required to examine the prisoners who are there daily, and on weekends and holidays – at the request of the prisoners themselves. The prison paramedic, the same senior lieutenant of the internal service Kashtayeva, as follows from the documents, examined Bochorishvili directly on the day of the use of force against him – April 12, 2017, it was Wednesday. The next time the doctors came to him only three days later, on April 15. Although already on the 12th, Bochorishvili “expressed complaints of pain in the left intercostal space when moving,” he received first aid only on April 15: he was given analgin.
But even from analgin Bochorishvili did not feel better: whenever doctors came to him (and they did not go every day), he complained that he was getting worse.
On April 20, Bochorishvili informed paramedic Kashtayeva of stomach pains and that he had vomited blood four times. “Objectively: there are traces of bright scarlet blood on the toilet,” paramedic Kashtayeva noted in the medical record. The next day, Bochorishvili’s condition did not change: he still complained of pain and vomiting of blood. Kashtaeva calmly stated: “The condition is relatively satisfactory.”
The next examination of Bochorishvili took place only on April 24, and then the paramedic even discovered an improvement in his health – however, she still recommended that the prisoner be hospitalized in a civilian clinic due to the impossibility of conducting a full examination in a prison hospital. However, first, Kashtaeva insisted, it was necessary to conduct a general blood test for Bochorishvili, after which “you can [будет] suggest ongoing bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract of unspecified localization.
Again. Five days after Bochorishvili began to vomit blood, he was prescribed a general blood test.
On April 25, an ambulance delivered prisoner Bochorishvili to the Rybinsk city hospital No. 9. The local doctors, a surgeon and a urologist, after examining him, confirmed: “There is at least 10 liters of free fluid in the abdominal cavity.” But, despite the sharp deterioration in his condition, despite the ongoing severe pain, Vazha Bochorishvili was returned to the prison hospital on the same day. However, not for long: the very next day, the prison resuscitator determined Bochorishvili’s condition as serious. The prisoner’s condition continued to deteriorate, he was swollen before his eyes “due to the presence of free fluid in the abdominal cavity.” “The patient cannot be excluded from bleeding of the gastrointestinal tract,” concluded the prison doctor. “Hemotransfusion in the conditions of the surgical department of the PB branch of the FKUZ MSCH-76 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia is impossible.” A real, real puncture in the work of the Russian torture system
On April 27, Bochorishvili was taken to the intensive care unit of the Rybinsk city hospital No. 1, where he was stopped from gastric bleeding, after which on May 3 he was returned back to the surgical department of the prison hospital.
While he could complain, Vazha complained. He said that he was in pain, that his stomach was unbearably bursting, so that he could no longer breathe. Probably everyone understood that some decisive steps had to be taken with respect to the prisoner Bochorishvili, otherwise he would simply die right here, in the prison hospital. And such steps have indeed been taken. On May 5, the case of the prisoner Bochorishvili was presented to the forensic medical commission “due to the severity of the disease and an unfavorable prognosis … to resolve the issue of the possibility of early release from serving a sentence due to illness.”
Whether Vazha was examined by doctors the next day after the question of his release was raised, we do not know – there are no corresponding records in his card. However, on the evening of May 7, the prison doctor stated that it was difficult for prisoner Bochorishvili to breathe, “the oxygen pillow does not give any effect.”
An entry dated 08.05.2017 at one in the morning: “The patient is agitated, screaming, rushing about within the bed, pronounced suffocation, a feeling of lack of air, psychomotor agitation increases, the patient knocks on the wall, requires immediate help; chlorpromazine was taken, after 15 minutes the patient calmed down and fell asleep.
No attempts to provide Bochorishvili with other assistance, except for a sedative injection, no calls for an ambulance were recorded in the prison log.
Five hours later, Bochorishvili was found unconscious. Resuscitation measures did not give any effect, the doctors pronounced him dead.
I, guided by the simple logic of the pricelessness of any human life without exception, always try to avoid mentioning the articles under which tortured prisoners were convicted. But in the case of Vazha Bochorishvili, on the contrary, I want to talk about it. He was convicted under Part 4 of Art. 158: theft committed by a group of persons. In total, he was given three and a half years, of which he had already served two. In another year and a half, he would have been released. It turns out that Vazha paid for his theft with his life.
An initial check initiated after the death of the prisoner did not reveal any connection between the “educational event” held on April 12 and the death that occurred less than a month later. Officially, the cause of death still sounds like “decompensated cirrhosis of the liver.” The “Public Verdict” will try to challenge this circumstance: Irina Biryukova filed a petition for a re-examination, she still wants to find out if there is a connection between the fact that Bochorishvili was beaten with batons on the stomach and the fact that his diseased liver soon failed. However, while lawyers are talking about something else. They say: the way this man lived his last three weeks of life, the way he died, is a crime. And the doctors who allowed this – prison and civilian – should be held accountable. How should the investigator who investigated the very first case of the death of a prisoner and found nothing special in the actions of the doctors should be held accountable.