Moreover, the use of torture in this case undermines the credibility not only of these obviously false testimonies, but also of all others. Fear of new torture is a sufficient motivator for the suspect to immediately, without hesitation, confirm all the guesses of the security officers, including outright false ones.
That is, even if, according to some, they “deserved” it, they still cannot be tortured. Not only out of a sense of humanity or the desire to comply with Russian law (and it directly prohibits torture ), but also out of banal practical necessity: a person under torture will say anything to stop it. It will be impossible to use such testimony to establish the truth in the case and find the real criminals. Actually, this is why torture, which was once upon a time ordered by court decision, has long become a thing of the past in all countries with a viable judicial system and was subsequently prohibited.
The Network case Here it will be useful to recall another terrorist case: the “Network” case. In October 2017, the FSB detained a company of anarchists and accused them of creating a terrorist community. Security forces tortured several detainees with a stun gun and beat them - and they testified against themselves. Here is what one of the defendants in the case, Viktor Filinkov, said :
“They asked me questions. If I didn’t know the answer, they shocked me; if the answer did not coincide with their expectations, they shocked me; if I thought about it, they shocked me; if I forgot what they said, they shocked me. There were no breaks, blows and questions, blows and answers, blows and threats.”
A large public campaign was held in defense of those involved in the Network case; many activists and public figures insisted on their innocence. And indeed: how can one take confessions seriously if the person who gave them was tortured with electric shock?
But shortly before the verdict, new circumstances were revealed in the case: Alexey Poltavets, who fled to Ukraine and was arrested in absentia, told Meduza journalists that he and his associates Maxim Ivankin and Dmitry Pchelintsev were involved in a double murder. The murder was definitely not a fabrication or a hoax by the security forces: the bodies were actually found. The only question was who did it. Maxim Ivankin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. But then he told reporters that he was also forced to sign a confession under torture.
And here we are faced with the question: how to relate to such statements? If you and I did not doubt for a second the legality of the actions of the security forces, one would think that Ivankin simply made up a story about torture in order to avoid punishment. But before this, Network members were actually tortured.
Torture as the norm Anarchist Azat Miftakhov, who had just been re-sentenced in a fictitious case, was also beaten and tortured with a screwdriver. Ruslan Kostylenkov from New Greatness, whom the security forces decided to appoint as the main culprit, was beaten and raped with a meat hammer during his arrest - after which he was forced to record on camera a confession that he and his student friends were preparing a coup. And along with them, thousands of other people were tortured: prisoners , suspects , and even witnesses .
Torture is so commonplace in the Russian law enforcement system that Ivankin’s statements should at least be taken seriously. And this example very well shows the second half of the problem, which we partially touched upon in the Crocus City example: torture not only leads to the punishment of the innocent, but also makes it possible for real criminals to avoid this punishment. After all, if Ivankin was really forced to incriminate himself, it means that the killer was someone else. Maybe this is one of the other defendants in the case, or maybe even a stranger who is now walking freely on the streets. But we no longer have a way to distinguish the innocent from the criminals, since trust in all the actions of the investigation in this case has been undermined.
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