Belarusian IT specialist who helped uncover torture in Russian prisons put on wanted list
Syarhei Saveliyeu, a Belarusian IT specialist who gave the Gulagu.net project an archive of video recordings of torture in Russian prisons, is now wanted by Russia. The man is now in Russia’s MIA wanted database.
Syarhei Saveliyeu was living in Russia when in 2013 he was asked to pass a bag. Syarhei says that he did not know about the contents of the bag. It turned out to be full of drugs. In 2015, Syarhei was sentenced to nine years in prison. He served his sentence in the Saratov region and was also abused.
As an IT specialist, he was forced to work for the prison service. He managed the prison’s computer network and provided access to video files from throughout the Russian prison system. This allowed him to gain access to videos of torture filmed in the colony and share them with human rights activists.
A criminal case was initiated after three videos of prisoner torture in Saratov TB hospital were made public. Several heads of the regional department of the prison department were fired.
After sharing the archive with the press, Syarhei Saveliyeu left for France, where he applied for political asylum.
belsat.eu
