RUSSIA: LGBT Fugitives Tell Of Two Secret Chechen Prisons As More Details Of Crackdown Emerge

Crime Russia reports:

The LGBT people who fled from repressions in Chechnya said there are two secret prisons for illegal detentions of offenders, as well as drug addicts and LGBT people who the Chechen government see as an issue, according to the Svoboda ratio station.

The raid began in December of 2016, not February of 2017 as earlier reported, according to the fugitives. The law enforcement would usually seize them at home, but sometimes they arrested them at work. Raids were carried out by employees of local departments of internal affairs, Special Rapid Response Team Terek, and Private Security Regiment of the Chechen MIA (also known as the “Neftyanoy Polk” (Rus. “Oil Regiment”), according to the fugitives.

Employees of the abovementioned agencies, as well as those of some other Chechen intelligence agencies, would frame those suspected of homosexuality by contacting them via the Internet. They later abducted and threw them to secret prisons.

Arrested LGBT people were sent to at least two such prisons at the end of 2016, according to the radio station. One is located in the town of Argun and the other in the Tsotsi-Yurt village. The Argun prison was organized in a former military commandant’s office, as reported earlier.

Many detainees were tortured to get them to inform on all the people they knew. Alternatively, prisoners could simply examine their phone messaging. This made the number of victims grow exponentially.

Chechen authorities have denied reports of the anti-gay crusade, saying that gays “do not exist” in their republic in the first place. The US State Department has issued two statements denouncing Chechnya and demanding the intervention of the Russian federal government.