Foreign Prisoners in Russia Are Massively Offered to Sign a Consent to Be Handed over to Their Home Countries’ Authorities

Employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) in penal colonies make rounds of prisoners from Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asian countries and Western countries with an offer to write a consent to be sent home for further serving of their sentences. A source in one of the colonies and human rights activist Ivan Astashin told IStories about it.

Astashin was approached by a citizen of Ukraine, who was sent to corrective colony No. 8 in Voronezh Oblast before the full-scale war in Ukraine. He had been seeking the right to serve his sentence in his home country for a long time, and the other day the head of the detachment came to him and offered to write an application to be sent to Ukraine for imprisonment.

The prisoner learned from FSIN officers and “thieves” (the highest caste in the Russian informal prison hierarchy) in the colony that the penitentiary service administration decided to expel convicted foreigners from all penitentiary institutions, fearing a repetition of recent terrorist attacks in the pre-trial detention center (SIZO) in Rostov-on-Don and corrective colony No. 19 in Volgograd Oblast.

An IStories’ source familiar with the situation in corrective colony No. 17 in Mordovia said that the colony administration summoned all foreign prisoners under the pretext of “statistical research” and offered to write similar statements. After that, they started preparing a prisoner from Belarus to be sent home.

The interlocutor noted that previously citizens of Kyrgyzstan were often sent home from the colony. There are three Kyrgyz in corrective colony No. 17 now, and they are also waiting to be sent home.

In addition to citizens of the former Soviet Union, two US citizens, convicted under articles on drug trafficking and, presumably, rape, as well as a Polish citizen Marian Radzajewski, who in 2019 was sentenced to 14 years in prison for espionage (Art. 276 of the Criminal Code), wrote an application to be sent home in this colony.

At the same time, there is no procedure for those convicted of espionage to be transferred to their home country to serve their sentence. Our source says that the prisoners from the U.S. and Poland “hope for an exchange.” American citizen Paul Whelan, who was transferred to the United States as part of a large-scale exchange between Russia and the West on August 1, was serving his sentence in corrective colony No. 17 under the same article.

“I understand that the FSIN officers were simply sent an order to make all foreigners write their consent to serve their sentences in their home country. And the FSIN themselves do not know whether there is espionage or not, [so they give everyone the same form to fill out],” human rights activist and former political prisoner Ivan Astashin commented on this inconsistency.

Yevgeny Smirnov, lawyer of the human rights organization Pervyi Otdel (“First Department”), suggested in a conversation with IStories that the transfer of prisoners to their home country could be formalized as a simple deportation, since extradition requires a request from another country to extradite a prisoner.

Polish citizen Marian Radzajewski has been trying to seek deportation to Poland since the verdict was announced, a source in his entourage told us. Radzajewski has not been heard from lately, and his contract with his defense attorneys ended long ago. It is likely that the Pole remains without a lawyer to this day.

• On June 16, six detainees of SIZO-1 in Rostov, acting on behalf of the Islamic State, took two FSIN employees hostage. During the storming five terrorists were killed, one was wounded. The attackers were natives of Stavropol, Dagestan and Ingushetia. Subsequently, the administration of the Rostov FSIN Directorate partially resigned, and four more employees were dismissed.

• On August 23, four natives of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, also on behalf of ISIS, took five employees of the colony and several prisoners hostage in the corrective colony No. 19 in Surovikino, Rostov Oblast. They killed four FSIN officers, and after the assault the bodies of hostages from among the prisoners were also caught on video. In addition, the security forces killed the militants themselves.