About it Center for Investigative Journalism said the daughter of Sergei Kotov Victoria Barabash.
The document, received on March 16, 2023 at the request of a lawyer, states that Sergei Kotov was detained by the Crimean department of the FSB “in connection with the opposition to the conduct of a special military operation.” It is also confirmed that the man is currently being held in a “penal institution”.
Sergey Kotov, 50, was taken away by the Russian military on April 7, 2022 in Oleshki. His daughter Victoria Barabash says that at six in the morning the Russians arrived at the house where their family lived.
“They told dad to take my 14-year-old sister and mom out into the yard. Then followed a search. When they let me into the house, they took me to different rooms and interrogated me. I don’t know what they asked my father, what they found on his phone. He was told to take his passport, then he was taken away,” says Victoria.
At first, Sergei Kotov spent about a week in Kherson, in the SBU building seized by the invaders, where he was tortured. According to her daughter, her father has a disease of leg osteomyelitis, in connection with which he received the third group of disability. From the people who were released by the Russians, Victoria learned that Sergei Kotov was beaten, injuring his injured leg, put a bag over his head, shot over his head, threatened to kill him. Because of the torture, the man lost consciousness, but they brought him to his senses and continued the abuse.
After Kherson, Sergei Kotov was transported to the occupied Crimea, where he was first held in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Simferopol, and in October he was transferred to pre-trial detention center No. 2, where the FSB created a special unit for “political” ones. He, like many other civilians abducted in the occupied territories of the south, has not been charged with any charges, so the lawyer does not have access to him.
The family of Sergei Kotov does not know what his detention may be connected with. According to Victoria Barabash, my father needs surgery on his leg, but no one will perform surgery on him in the pre-trial detention center, he also does not receive all the necessary medicines.
The CJR spoke about SIZO No. 2 in Simferopol in the program “The Question of National Security” with Valentina Samar “Secret prisons of the FSB in the Crimea and in the south.
Recall:
- CZHR published a series of materials “How the FSB molds terrorists from ordinary people“. These are civilian residents of Melitopol, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Genichesk, who are being held in the pre-trial detention center in Simferopol and in Lefortovo in Moscow. They were kidnapped in the occupied territories of the south, brutally tortured, seeking a confession in preparing or committing a terrorist act, and then handed over to FSB investigators in Crimea and Russia, who launched a whole pipeline of falsified cases of international terrorism.
