Ilya Kapustin: “They Said They Could Break My Legs and Dump Me in the Woods”

“They Said They Could Break My Legs and Dump Me in the Woods.” Petersburger Ilya Kapustin Recounts How FSB Officers Tortured Him
Yegor Skovoroda

January 27, 2018

Traces of handcuffs on Ilya Kapustin’s hands. Photo courtesy of his attorney and Mediazona

This week, FSB officers searched the homes of several Petersburg antifascists and anarchists. The searches were authorized by order of a Penza court.  One of them, Arman Sagynbayev, had lived for a time in Petersburg. They were charged with involvement in a terrorist network (Russian Criminal Code Article 205.4).

On January 24, 23-year-old antifascist  was detained at Pulkovo Airport in Petersburg. The following day it transpired he had been remanded to police custody as the member of a terrorist network and had “confessed the suspicions about him.” Filinkov recounted that after he was detained he had been beaten and tortured with an electric cattle prod, presumably by FSB officers.

“Most of all I was shocked by the traces on the hips from the electric shocker (as Viktor assures me). During my long struggles against police lawlessness I have never seen such injuries, and I have over fifty torture and bullying convictions of police officers under my belt,” attorney Vitaly Cherkasov  on his Facebook page after visiting Filinkov in Petersburg’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 3.

On January 25, the security services searched at least two more flats. After one such visit, antifascist Igor Shiskin . Neither his loved ones nor his attorney have been able to find him. During her interrogation, Shishkin’s wife was asked about the movements or groups Network (Set) and November Fifth (5.11), and also asked whether she professed anarchist views. [—TRR.]

Ilya Kapustin was seized by masked secret service officers on the evening of January 25. The young man says he was tortured with an electric cattle prod while being asked questions about an aquaintance of his in Petersburg who had recently been arrested, the anarchist movement, and Penza, a city Kapustin has never visted. Mediazona presents his firsthand account of torture, his interrogation as a witness, and the search conducted by officers from the FSB’s Petersburg and Leningrad Region Office.

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It so happened I am acquainted with a person who was recently arrested in Petersburg. I am an industrial climber, and I knew him from work. I telephoned him with a job officer right when he was being detained, which definitely caused what happened.

When I was returning home in the evening and was quite close to my house, five or so men in black uniforms and masks attacked me from different directions. They pushed me on the ground and dragged me into a minivan while kicking me. I tried to call for help. I yelled, but to no avail. I was knocked down on the floor of the vehicle, and the men searched me while continuing to kick me. I was handcuffed me very tightly, so tightly I still have cuts on my hands.

The vehicle drove off, and I was interrogated. When I did not know the answer to a question, when I did not understand who or what they were talking about, they shocked me with an electric cattle prod near my groin or the side of my stomach. They shocked me so I would say some acquaintance of mine or another was planning to do something dangerous. There were questions about whether I was a member of certain organizations, where I had traveled, and whether I had been to Penza. They asked me to tell them details about the lives of my acquaintances.

So, from time to time they poked me with the shocker. At some point, one of them said they could dump me in the woods somewhere and break my legs. I was looking forward to this moment when it would all be over, because they had tortured me for such a long time it was quite unbearable. 


Traces of electric shock on Ilya Kapustin’s body. Photo courtesy of his attorney and Mediazona

I was in the vehicle from roughly nine-thirty in the evening to one-thirty in the morning, when we arrived, apparently at an FSB office. When they took me out, they pulled a hood over my head and forced me to look down, and I could not figure out where we were, but later, when they took me home to search my flat, I guessed that it was a corner on Shpalernaya Street of the FSB building [whose main entrance is on Liteiny Avenue in downtown Petersburg—TRR]. I saw just as many secret service people in the office, only they were not wearing and were dressed in plain clothes. An investigator questioned me for something like an hour. Other secret service guys would sometimes stop by. One of them told me that if I did not want a second round, I should answer all the questions.

Then we went to the flat where we live, and there they let us read a search warrant issued by a court in Penza. During the search, I refused to switch on my laptop and telephone. That made them act very stridently. They threatened to hide a grenade and come back in a couple of days and find it in a search. Ultimately, they confiscated my laptop, telephone, and hard drive.

When they left, I went to the emergency room and documented the fact I had been beaten. I was issued a certificate in which all my injuries are listed. I am now looking for a lawyer to file a complaint. I am not mixed up in anything, but out of the blue I was tortured for several hours.

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