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THE DETENTION PROCESS

The thing is that detention is close to being the main way of solving a crime.

-Yuri Sinel'shchikov, deputy procurator for the city of Moscow88

It's very convenient when the person is in a cell. A person at liberty behaves completely differently. A person who is in conditions of isolation is stripped, I think, of something that is of the greatest importance.... At liberty there is a right to chose, and here there isn't, that alone breaks [him].

-Valentina Lutsyshina, lawyer for Dmitry El'sakov89

Police use the detention process and the initial period in custody to isolate and disorient criminal suspects, sometimes beginning with the use of extreme violence at the time of detention. Once in custody, detainees rarely have prompt access to a lawyer, and when they do the attorney is often not one of their own choosing.

Under Russian law, police can detain a person in four general sets of circumstances. Article 11(2) of the law on the police allows a police officer to detain an individual for up to three hours to establish his or her identity, but only if the officer has sufficient grounds to suspect that the individual has committed an administrative or criminal offense. The law on administrative offenses allows police officers to detain persons for committing administrative offenses, or misdemeanors, in a limited number of cases.90 Article 122 of the criminalprocedure code allows police to detain a criminal suspect without a procurator's warrant for three days in certain specified circumstances.91 In such cases, police are obliged to inform the procuracy of the detention within twenty-four hours. The procuracy must decide within forty-eight hours after receiving this information whether to sanction the arrest. Article 22(2) of the Russian constitution now provides for arrests to be reported to the courts for judicial sanctioning within forty-eight hours of detention. However, this provision has not yet taken effect due to delays in the adoption of a new criminal procedure code. Police can also arrest an individual after the procuracy has issued an arrest warrant in accordance with articles 89 and 90 of the criminal procedure code.92

Police are obliged to identify themselves and to inform the detainee of his or her rights.93 These rights include the right not to testify against oneself or a close relative, and the right to a lawyer from the moment of detention.94

Our research shows that police routinely disregard the above-mentioned procedures. Many of the torture victims we interviewed were taken to police stations for what police portrayed as voluntary visits, often late in the evening. Several others were detained for administrative violations, and, once in detention, questioned about criminal offenses. Police often hold detainees who are detained without sufficient grounds outside the normal detention areas as a way of avoiding their registration.

In an article in Zakonnost', the monthly publication of the procuracy, the deputy procurator for Moscow, Yuri Sinel'shchikov, confirmed that investigations by the Moscow procuracy found that so-called "non-procedural" detentions are very frequent:95

The most widespread non-procedural detention is the detention of persons who are suspected of having committed a crime without formalizing that fact on the basis of article 122 of the criminal procedure code.... Besides, the suspects are frequently detained without a [police] detention report because there are no grounds for detention under article 122 of the criminal procedure code.

Police officers use various methods to cover up such facts. In particular, they keep the suspect outside the IVS [temporary holding center at police stations], placing him in offices, the room of the duty officer, and other places where there is no strict registration of such persons. (In one police precinct, detainees were handcuffed to a pipe that had been installed throughout the corridor especially for that purpose).

An inspection at the precincts under the jurisdiction of one of the district procuracies found 130 cases of such [unlawful] detentions [on administrative charges] of citizens. They were taken to the precincts on suspicion of having committed a crime but the detention reports were...written not based on article 122 of the criminal procedure code but on the basis of the Code of Administrative Offences.96

Police use these methods apparently when they lack sufficient grounds to detain a suspect under article 122 of the criminal procedure code. For example, a number of torture victims and their relatives told Human Rights Watch that police justified their detentions by referring to their conformity to racial stereotypes or "profiles" identifying them as suspects, even though this cannot alone be considered sufficient grounds for arrest or detention.

Informal Detentions

When police request an individual to make a voluntary visit to the police station, he or she is under no formal obligation to go. The individual has technically not been detained and theoretically can leave at any time. The ostensibly voluntary nature of questioning under such auspices is advantageous for police as it leaves the procedural status of an individual unclear and relieves police officers of the obligation to process any detention or arrest report or to inform an individual of his or her rights.

When police detain a suspect without a warrant, they can be fairly polite so as to avoid alarming relatives or bystanders. They mislead the suspect and his relatives, saying the matter is not serious and that the person will return within a few hours. Abuse starts only when the individual gets into the police car or arrives at the station.

Igor Kaliapin, a specialist on torture and criminal justice for the Nizhnii Novgorod Society for Human Rights,97 sketched what he called the "standard situation" in Nizhnii Novgorod:

The person is taken at home, and [police] behave fairly correctly.... The doorbell rings. The door opens. Two or three people walk in: "We need this and this person." They introduce themselves.... They show their ID cards and possibly a detention decision under article 122 [of the criminal procedure code]. But they don't always do that, it's often not done. They often come without a decision and just [say]: "We are such and such. We need to talk to you. We'll tell you later about what matter. Let's go."... Relatives, especially, are misled.98

If police have no arrest warrant, and fail to induce the suspect to come along voluntarily, they may resort to forcible detention. The 1995 case of Tatiana Popkova is illustrative:

Officers from the crime police...came to me, they came late in the evening.... They did not show any ID, just told me: "We are officers from the crime police, please come with us." When I refused, they forcibly put me in the [police] car and took me to the city police department.... They were waiting for me on the street when I arrived in a taxi.99

The majority of those whom Human Rights Watch interviewed agreed to go to the police station. Most of them apparently realized that the offer to come to the police station is nothing less than an order and that any form of protest or insubordination would result in violence. Many might not have realized that the law does not oblige them to go to the police station without a summons. At the station, police held what they have sometimes called an "operativnaia beseda" or "informal questioning" with the person. These "informal questionings" are not regulated in the criminal procedure code in any way.

Vladislav Seregin from Cheremkhovo, Irkutsk province, told Human Rights Watch about his detention:

I was sitting at home on January 21, [1996.] I was on vacation. At around 9:00 a.m. the doorbell rang, my wife gets up, walks out and he says: "Open up, police." She opens the door, he walks in: "Where is your husband?"-"He's still sleeping."- "Wake him up, please." I get up and walk out, he says: "Let's go to the city police department for your testimony on this case." I got dressed without thinking anything of it and went to the city police department.... He said that it would take only half an hour, maximum an hour.100

At the police station, Seregin was threatened with physical violence if he would not confess. With a pregnant wife who was about to give birth, Seregin signed a confession that he had stolen meat from the factory where he worked and was allowed to go home. The trial formally started in September 1997 but the judge continually postponed the hearing. Eventually, in January 1998 she heard the case, disregarded Seregin's allegations that he had been threatened, and sentenced him to an eighteen-month suspended prison term.

Detention on Administrative Charges

Although persons detained for administrative offenses have some procedural rights-such as the right to counsel during court hearings and the mandatory presence of the defendant at trial-these safeguards are observed even less strictly than in criminal proceedings. Police frequently detain individuals whom they in fact consider to be criminal suspects on administrative offenses and hold them in detention for up to fifteen days, without granting them access to a lawyer, on thebasis of court decisions that are issued in their absence.101 During this period, police officers have ample time to force a confession to more serious, criminal offenses. A lawyer from the city of Arkhangel'sk explained:

[I]n a case of detention for administrative offenses, a procurator does not take any part at all, there's no need to convince anyone, no need to present conclusions and [police officers can] work quietly, there's no need to engage a lawyer. During that period, the person is stripped of the right to a defense. It's almost impossible for a lawyer to be granted access in a case of petty hooliganism.102

In such cases, police officers, sometimes unbeknownst to the "suspect," request a judge to sentence the individual to imprisonment on administrative charges such as public drunkenness, swearing in public, or insulting a police officer. The administrative hearings in the cases researched by Human Rights Watch were held in the absence of the alleged offenders, who thus had no means of defending themselves against the charges. In fact, some of the torture victims said they learned they had been detained on administrative charges only when they gained access to their case materials against them at the end of the preliminary investigation, sometimes more than a year later. This practice violates article 247 of the law on administrative offences, which states that a person accused of an administrative offense must be present during the court hearing and has a right to legal assistance. Administrative court cases can be heard in absentia only if the individual has been informed well in advance of the time of the hearing, does not appear, and fails to request a postponement. In other words, there is no apparent excuse for a trial in absentia when the accused is already in custody.

Mikhail Iurochko and his codefendants, Dmitrii El'sakov and Evgenii Mednikov, were detained first for an alleged administrative offense before theywere accused of a double murder and tortured. As noted above, they were tortured, confessed to the crime, and sentenced: Iurachko and Mednikov to death, and El'sakov to fifteen years imprisonment. In 1999, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction, and the three were released. Dmitrii El'sakov told Human Rights Watch about his detention in 1993:

I came out of the building where I work, in town, and sat in my car. Two detectives came up to me.... They simply told me: "Let's go and talk for ten minutes at the police station, you'll be back in ten minutes." They took me [to the station] and literally pushed me into a cell.

About an hour later, they took me out and showed me a decision of Judge Zakharov for my arrest, that he [sentenced me to ten days of detention] for some sort of petty hooliganism, which a police detective had witnessed a week earlier.

I wasn't taken to the judge, just shown the decision. The judge believed the detective that I had committed hooliganism.103

El'sakov was accused of swearing at a police officer whom he said had been harassing him for weeks, telling him to come to the police station to confess to a double murder. He spent the next four and a half years in a SIZO.

The lawyer for Mikhail Iurochko told Human Rights Watch that her client was also detained for hooliganism:

He was detained on October 8, 1993. The reason: petty hooliganism, which he denies.... [H]e came up to a kiosk, where another man was standing, and they had an argument, and Iurochko was said to have started a fight. The judge gave him fifteen days. He spent [them] in the IVS, where criminal suspects are held. In the case dossier, there is information, specifically a decision to seize his correspondence, which shows that at that moment he was already a suspect in the [criminal] case.104

On March 5, 1998, Sergei Samsonov was approached on the street in Sergiev Posad (Moscow province) by two policemen who asked him to come with them to the police station as "their boss wanted to ask him some questions." They held him at the station overnight and took him to court the next day, when he was sentenced to ten days of detention for petty hooliganism. After ten days, during which he was allegedly tortured, he was taken to the IVS on suspicion of murder.105

Torture and Ill-treatment at the Time of Detention

As noted above, detainees are often seized in violent police raids on their homes and are subjected to serious physical abuse inside their homes or on the street, and in the presence of their families. Sometimes family members present during these raids are themselves seriously assaulted. In cases described to Human Rights Watch by former detainees and their relatives, police generally either did not identify themselves or flashed their identification too quickly to allow one to read it. Treatment described ranged from systematic beatings to near suffocation.

Mikhail Sobolev was severely beaten at his home on the night of November 28, 1995. Sobolev told Human Rights Watch that plain clothed police officers forced their way into his apartment at about 11:30 p.m., did not identify themselves, and:

They immediately started to beat me, they didn't listen to my questions. Swear words, blows with the handle of the guns about my head.... They screamed: "On the floor, we're going to shoot, we'll kill you!"... One of them started to kick me, then took a stool, which stood next to him, they beat me with guns about the head, my back.... He took the stool and hit me over the head, my back. The stool fell apart.106

The father of Andrei Potanin told Human Rights Watch that police had forced their way into his tenth-floor apartment on the early morning of May 11, 1995 to arrest his son, whom they beat senseless in front of him. He said the raid was led by a deputy head of the crime police named Sergei Kolosovskii:

When I heard the slamming of metal doors and noise in the apartment I came out of the bathroom and saw Kolosovskii beating my son.... My son fell and lost consciousness.... I started to scream. They were in plain clothes and I didn't know at first who they were: maybe bandits. He[Kolosovskii] pointed a gun at me.... I said: "What are you doing." He answered: "We're from the police."107

Kolosovskii took Potanin's son to the police station, despite the fact that he did not have an arrest or search warrant.

In 1996, Moscow police detained Boris Botvinnik in a joint operation with riot troops (OMON).108 Botvinnik said police came to his apartment late on the night of September 18, 1996 and immediately knocked him to the floor. As explained above, police tortured him as they "interrogated" him at his apartment. "They came in, carried out a superficial search, let me get dressed-I had already gone to bed-put on handcuffs and after that some thing like an interrogation started."109 At trial, two police detectives contradicted each other as to whether Botvinnik had voluntarily come to the police station or was brought in following an arrest warrant.

Access to Lawyers

Under Russian law, criminal suspects have the right to an attorney from the moment of detention,110 and police are obligated to inform them of this right.111 Police reportedly rarely respect these obligations, and the more than fifty torture victims we interviewed all said they had not had access to a lawyer immediately following their detention. A former police investigator told Human Rights Watch:

Lawyers are the worst enemy of any investigator. And I can tell you that, although it may not be right, we always tried to do everything to avoid having a lawyer getting involved in the case, with all truths and untruths.112

Some torture victims related how their requests for a lawyer provoked violent reactions from the police. Igor Kaliapin told Human Rights Watch:

As a rule, [bringing up] the matter of a lawyer is risky. If a detainee asks for a lawyer, they laugh in his face: "What lawyer? We'll show you a lawyer!" "Who do you think you are? Who? What article 51?113 Haveyou gone out of your mind? Do you know where you are?! What lawyer do you want?!"114

Andrei Getsko told Human Rights Watch: "I asked for a lawyer all the time, [and said] that I wouldn't give testimony without a lawyer. But when you start to talk about the law, it makes them even more angry. They became infuriated and started to beat even more." Andrei Kol'tsov demanded to be given a lawyer after he was detained on September 11, 1996 and beaten up in a forest: "I once again started to say: `What do you want? Give me a lawyer.' They [answered]: `We'll give you a lawyer right now,' and started to beat me up."115

Police have various ways of denying detainees access to a lawyer. When the detainee simply does not ask for a lawyer out of ignorance or fear, police do not inform him or her of this right. When detainees do ask for a lawyer, police may blatantly deny the detainee the right to a lawyer, disregarding whatever effect on the outcome of the case such a procedural violation may entail; or police will try to legitimize the absence of a lawyer by forcing the detainee to sign a statement declining counsel.

The father of Andrei Potanin told Human Rights Watch that his son was beaten during his first interrogation on May 11, 1995, while his demands for a lawyer were ignored:

They didn't even pay attention to his demands that he should be given a lawyer and he wasn't given one until I found a lawyer. I couldn't immediately find a lawyer.... By that time, twenty-four hours later, I found one, they had already done it all.... During the following interrogations they didn't beat him, then there was a lawyer [present].116

Kirill Komlev from Nizhnii Novgorod was detained on September 5, 1996. He immediately demanded a lawyer, but was told that he had no such right.117 Later that day, police called in a duty lawyer to see Komlev. This lawyer confirmed to Human Rights Watch that he had seen Komlev on September 5 after he hadobviously been beaten. The following day, police apparently forced Komlev to decline the service of his lawyer. Komlev's mother told Human Rights Watch:

When they detained him [Kirill] on September 5 and started to beat him, he immediately demanded a lawyer.... Despite the fact that, on September 6, I officially hired a lawyer and informed investigator Bubnov, who was in charge of the case, about that on September 6.... Still, they ignored it all and all that torture was used without lawyers. The lawyers were allowed access to them [Kirill and his brother] only on September 13, 1996.118

Boris Botvinnik told Human Rights Watch:

They brought me to Petrovka [the central police station in Moscow]. I was forced to decline legal counsel. They [police officers] promised me that if I would insist on a lawyer, they would give me back to the riot police. I...wrote [a statement declining counsel] because of the phrase: "You won't live to see a lawyer!"119

During Botvinnik's first interrogation, as well as during an investigative reconstruction at the crime scene, he had no legal counsel. After he was allowed to have a lawyer, he changed his testimony, as did both his codefendants, who had also "voluntarily" declined the assistance of a lawyer and had previously confessed under duress.

Police frequently detain their victims at a time when it is practically impossible to engage an attorney. Il'ia Berlin, a lawyer in Arkhangel'sk, told Human Rights Watch:

[U]sually detention is unexpected for the individual. In Russia...people don't have personal lawyers. In order for a lawyer to start working on a case, the relatives [of the detainee] must be informed. They must take the decision to hire a lawyer.

What happens in practice? An amazingly large number of detentions take place Friday afternoon. According to the law, [police] must inform relatives or the person indicated by the detainee about the detention. But on Friday afternoon an individual without personal contacts won't have anywhere to turn: lawyer's collegia are closed.... Thus, it is practically impossible to hire a lawyer until Monday.120

Once police elicit a first confession (which is usually enough for a conviction, see below "Torture and Confession Evidence"), the victim's complete isolation becomes unnecessary. In fact, police sometimes call a "friendly" lawyer themselves at that point to frustrate any possible future torture complaints. In such cases, police tell the detainee, who is still disoriented, to repeat his confession in the presence of the "friendly" lawyer and threaten him if he retracts it. Igor Koliapin summarized what many other victims and human rights activists told us: "As a rule, [the police] invite a so-called `pocket lawyer' in such a situation...that is, a lawyer who doesn't work completely conscientiously."121 When they realize that it is time to charge the suspect:

they immediately phone a lawyer. There's no reason to phone the lawyer on duty at the lawyers' collegium. They can phone their "own" lawyer at home...: "Come immediately, we need to charge someone." The lawyer comes and fulfills his formal obligations. He remains present: "I am your lawyer, if you want you can pass on something for your mother...." The lawyer usually understands [how the police received the confession] when he reads the report and the suspect sits there with a beaten-up face or moans. The lawyer...must ask the question: "Don't you want to make a statement about the circumstances under which you gave this testimony? Did they beat you or not?"... A lawyer who is invited by the police usually doesn't do that.... He thinks: "Well, he is a criminal, why should I protect him especially?"122

One torture victim told Human Rights Watch how in 1994 a police investigator manipulated his statement declining the police-appointed lawyer into a statement declining all services of an attorney:

The investigator brought in a lawyer, his friend, sat him down with me and said: "Go with him into the room and tell him for half an hour what you want to tell him." I told him: "Why would I tell your friend anything? I don't trust him." [Another day], the investigator brought in the lawyer friend and said: "We are going to charge you in his presence, he's a good lawyer, I've known him for a long time." I said that I don't need such a lawyer: "Call my relatives, let them hire another lawyer." "Why do you need that? It costs so much money! [A private lawyer] won't help you at all...."And he deceived me, forcing me to write a statement that I don't need the lawyer. I wrote that with my own hands. It came out as if I didn't need a lawyer at all, while that was not at all what I had meant.123

88 Yuri Sinel'shchikov, "Nezakonnoe zaderzhanie," Zakonnost' [Lawfulness] (Moscow), no. 2, 1999, p. 9. 89 Human Rights Watch interview with Liubov' Korosteleva and Valentina Lutsyshina, Arkhangel'sk, July 20, 1998. 90 Article 239 of the Code of the RSFSR on Administrative Offenses states: Detention of a person on administrative charges, a body search or a search of a person's belongings, his means of transportation and confiscation of his belongings or documents are permissible in cases directly provided for in legislative acts of the U.S.S.R. and the R.S.F.S.R. in order to stop administrative offenses, when all other measures of pressure have been exhausted, to establish a person's identity, to write a report on an administrative offense, if this is obligatory, to ensure the timely and correct review of cases regarding administrative offenses or execution of such sentences. 91 Article 122 states: 1. The organ of investigation has the right to detain an individual, suspected of committing a crime for which the punishment could be imprisonment, only if one of the following criteria is met: 1) the individual is caught in the act of committing the crime, or immediately following; 2) witnesses, including victims, directly identify the individual as the one who committed the crime; 3) on the body of the suspect, on his clothing, in his possession, or in his place of residence, are found clear traces of the committed crime. 2. In the presence of other information that gives grounds to suspect the individual of committing the crime, he can be detained only when the individual has attempted to escape, he does not have a permanent place of residence, or the identity of the suspect has not been established. 3. In all cases of the detention of a person suspected of having committed a crime, the investigative agency is required to write a detention report indicating the grounds, motive, day and hour, year and month, place of detention, explanation of the suspect, time of writing of the detention report, and to report in writing to the procurator. The detention report is signed by its author, as well as the suspect. Within forty-eight hours from the moment of receiving the detention report, the procurator must give sanction for either taking of the person into custody, or his release. 92 Article 89 of the criminal procedure code states: 1. When there are sufficient grounds for believing that the accused would evade an inquiry, preliminary investigation or trial or will obstruct the establishment of the truth in a criminal case or will engage in criminal activity, as well as in order to ensure execution of a sentence, the person conducting the inquiry, the investigator, the prosecutor and the court may apply one of the following preventive measures in respect of the accused: a written undertaking not to leave a specified place; a personal guarantee or a guarantee by a public organization; detention in custody. 2. Bail shall be permitted as a preventive measure if sanctioned by a procurator or if a court so decides. 3. Army personnel, as a preventive measure, may be placed under supervision of the commanders of their respective units. 4. Should there be no grounds which necessitate a preventive measure the accused shall sign the statement pledging to appear upon summons and inform about change of residence. Article 90 of the criminal procedure code states: In exceptional cases a preventive measure may be applied to a person suspected of having committed a criminal offense even before a charge is brought against him. In such a case the charge shall be brought not later than ten days from the time of the application of the preventive measure. If no charge is brought within this period, the preventive measure shall be canceled. 93 According to Mikhail Pashkin of the Moscow police union, this obligation is contained in MVD internal regulations. Human Rights Watch interview, Moscow, February 25, 1999. 94 Article 48 of the constitution states that: 1. The right to receive qualified legal assistance shall be guaranteed to everyone. In cases provided for by law, legal assistance is provided free of charge. 2. Everyone who is detained, taken into custody or accused of committing a crime shall have the right to make use of the assistance of a lawyer from the moment he was detained, taken into custody or presented the accusation respectively. Article 51 of the constitution states: 1. No one is obliged to testify against himself, his spouse and close relatives, the range of which shall be defined by a federal law. 95 Police officers are almost never prosecuted for unlawfully detaining criminal suspects. According to Sinel'shchikov, this happens only in a few dozen cases per year. 96 Yuri Sinel'shchikov, "Nezakonnoe zaderzhanie," Zakonnost', no. 2, 1999, p. 8. 97 The Nizhnii Novgorod Society for Human Rights has closely monitored torture and ill-treatment in police lockups and other detention facilities for several years and issued several reports documenting dozens of torture cases in 1997 and 1998. See the organization's website for its reports on torture and other human rights problems: http://www.uic.nnov.ru/hrnnov/rus/nnshr/index.htm. Igor Kaliapin has worked for the organization on criminal justice issues since 1993. 98 Human Rights Watch interview with Igor Kaliapin, Nizhnii Novgorod, October 17, 1997. 99 Human Rights Watch interview with Tatiana Popkova, Usol'e-Sibirskoe, Irkutsk province, April 8, 1998. 100 Human Rights Watch interview with Vladislav Seregin, Cheremkhovo, Irkutsk province, April 2, 1998. 101 Article 247(1) of the law on administrative offenses grants a person accused of an administrative offense the right to a lawyer only during the court hearing on the offense. A commentary to the code on administrative offenses (I.I. Veremeenko, I.G. Salishcheva, M.S. Studenikina, Kommentarii k Kodeksu RSFSR ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniiakh, Moscow 1998), however, notes that this provision no longer conforms to obligations under Russia's constitution, which grants everyone the right to an attorney from the moment of detention, regardless of the nature of the charge. The authors argue that detainees held for administrative offenses should now have access to a lawyer at any time during the proceedings against him. However, this is not yet established practice. 102 Human Rights Watch interview with Liubov' Korosteliova and Valentina Lutsyshina, Arkhangel'sk, July 20, 1998. 103 Human Rights Watch interview with Dmitrii El'sakov, Arkhangel'sk, July 21, 1998. 104 Human Rights Watch interview with Liubov' Korosteleva and Valentina Lutsyshina, Arkhangel'sk, July 20, 1998. 105 Human Rights Watch interview with Svetlana Samsonova, Moscow, August 6, 1998. 106 Human Rights Watch interview with Mikhail Sobolev, Ekaterinburg, August 11, 1997. 107 Human Rights Watch interview with Mr. Potanin, Ekaterinburg, August 8, 1997. 108 Otriad militsii osobogo naznacheniia (literally, Special Task Militia Force). 109 Human Rights Watch interview with Boris Botvinnik, Moscow, March 14, 1997. 110 Article 48(2) of the constitution. 111 Article 58 of the criminal procedure code. 112 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Vladimir Fedorov, Moscow, June 8, 1999. "Vladimir Fedorov" is not the man's real name. 113 Article 51 of the constitution establishes the right not to testify against oneself. 114 Human Rights Watch interview with Igor Kaliapin, Niznhnii Novgorod Society for Human Rights, Nizhnii Novgorod, October 17, 1997. 115 Human Rights Watch interview with Andrei Kol'tsov, Cheremkhovo, Irkutsk province, April 2, 1998. 116 Human Rights Watch interview with the father of Andrei Potanin, Ekaterinburg, August 8, 1997. 117 Complaint submitted by Kirill Komlev to the procuracy in September 1996. 118 Human Rights Watch interview with Liubov' Shamberova, Nizhnii Novgorod, October 17, 1997. 119 Human Rights Watch interview with Boris Botvinnik, Moscow, March 14, 1997; telephone conversation with Boris Botvinnik, August 17, 1998. 120 Human Rights Watch interview with Il'ia Berlin, Arkhangel'sk, July 20, 1998. Lawyers' collegia are law offices. 121 Human Rights Watch interview with Igor Koliapin, Nizhnii Novgorod, October 17, 1997. 122 Ibid. 123 Human Rights Watch interview with Dmitrii El'sakov, Arkhangel'sk, July 21, 1998.

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