Trepashkin on Alexanyan

Former political prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin writes in the Moscow Times about his experience in Building 6 of the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center, the same place where Vasily Alexanyan was being held: “In addition, the authorities institute 24-hour observation of detainees — again, under the pretext of medical necessity, but the real motive is to apply psychological torture. I remember very well when they brought in a detainee with the same illnesses from which Aleksanyan suffers. At some point during the night, the detainee suffered serious complications and started bleeding from the mouth. The other prisoners started banging on their doors, begging the authorities to summon medical help. No one responded. The detainee died the next morning, and we all saw how he was carried away on a gurney to the morgue, which is located on the premises.”