Either Do It, or Your Wife and Mother Will Be Arrested”: Defendant in the Artpodgotovka Case Says He Was Tortured and Forced to Assemble a Bomb

“Either do it, or your wife and mother will be arrested”: a defendant in the Artpodgotovka case said he was tortured and forced to assemble a bomb

Sergey Yakovlev told the court that FSB officers tortured him for three days and then forced him to assemble a bomb on camera. According to the man, the security officers threatened to arrest his wife and mother.

Torture and the bomb

The story began with a package that Artpodgotovka leader Vyacheslav Maltsev asked him to pick up from a hiding place in Belarus and take to Orenburg. Yakovlev did not know what was inside and thought it contained equipment. He left the package in another hiding place.

In court, Yakovlev also said that he had planned to set fire to facilities of the oil and gas complex, but did not carry out those plans.

Yakovlev was detained soon afterward. After three days of torture, the man says, he was forced to say that the package contained a bomb. He showed the security officers the hiding place, but by that time the package had disappeared.

Then, according to Yakovlev, FSB officers “dragged in” a bomb “from somewhere” and forced him to repair it, threatening to arrest his wife and mother. The device could not be repaired, so the security officers brought the necessary parts, and Yakovlev assembled the electronic part of the bomb.

After that, FSB officers filmed him assembling the explosive device and throwing it onto a train.

What Artpodgotovka is

Artpodgotovka is the movement of politician Vyacheslav Maltsev. Russian authorities have designated it “extremist.”

Eight people are defendants in the current case over preparations for a terrorist attack, including Yakovlev’s wife and an acquaintance of his. The FSB believes that Artpodgotovka supporters planned to drop a bomb from a bridge onto a military train in Orenburg Region.

Two other defendants also described violence after their detention. One spoke of torture, the other of a beating after which he was found to have a broken rib.

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