Russian authorities have fired five senior officials and opened an investigations into into alleged torture and sexual assaults at a jail in the Saratov region, as per Reuters. These actions were taken after Gulagu.net, a project against corruption and torture in Russia, claimed that it had evidence of ‘orchestrated sadism at the prison’. 

The Investigative Committee of Russia, a federal agency, said Wednesday that it had opened a slew of inquiries into sexual violence and abuse of authority. The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) said it had fired five senior prison officials, as per Reuters. The fired included the director of the prison where the alleged abuse took place and the head of the regional prison service.

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Two days ago, a video showing inmates at a prison in the Saratov region being tortured and sexually assaulted leaked online. It was published by Gulagu.net. 

The company also claimed that it had received a massive leak of documents, photos and videos which proved that hundreds of people across the Russian prison system had been tortured and raped.

 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov promised a ‘serious investigation’ if and when the authenticity of the material was confirmed. 

The founder of  Gulagu.net Vladimir Osechkin told Reuters that the abuses were taking place in many different parts of the country.

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“A system of torture has been and is still operational. They (the authorities) are afraid to admit the truth in public, and the truth is awful because the truth is that their special services have been torturing people en masse,” he said. 

Since being sentenced to prison in February, Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny has several times spoken about the poor conditions of the prison system in the country. 

In an article published by his representative, on his behalf, in USA Today, Navalny highlighted the level of corruption in the Russian prisons, where the law says inmates must not be treated in a way that is “harsh” or “abases human dignity”.