FSIN to File Suit against Whistleblower

Remember the leaked Yekaterinburg video of prison torture? A whistleblower initially leaked the a copy of the tape to human rights activist Lev Ponomarev, who then provided it to us … and from there everything took off. Well apparently the FSIN (Russia’s penitentiary department) is planning on filing a lawsuit against the person who allowed the video to get circulated. I’m sure Donald Rumsfeld must be wondering why he didn’t think of threatening to sue Joe Darby for leaking the Abu Ghraib photos… The following is an exclusive translation of an ITAR-TASS story from Gazeta.ru. FSIN to file suit in connection with video recording about beating of prisoners The Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments of Russia (FSIN) intends to file suit against the circulator of a video clip, on which is recorded how employees of the OMON are applying truncheons in relation to the inmates of one of the colonies in Sverdlovsk oblast.

“The video recording was posted on the internet and it is being declared that these events took place last year. At the same time as this film belongs to the beginning of the 1990s and on it are imprinted actions of police OMON, moreover in a completely different colony, and not the one about which is spoken in the trailer to the subject. The actions of the OMONovites were fully understandable – in the colony at that moment there were mass disorders and even on the film it can be seen that certain of the convicts, to put it mildly, are not entirely adequate”, told official representative of the FSIN of Russia Alexander Sidorov.He noted that then this video recording had been studied in the procuracy and the actions of the employees of the OMON had been found to be justified.“We know who concretely has circulated this recording and in relation to him will file suit for slander”, declared the representative of FSIN, specifying more precisely that this – is one of the human rights advocates in Ekaterinburg. // ITAR-TASS