http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1066223,00.htmlCorrupt force extracts confessions with 'elephant mask' and beatings
Nick Paton Walsh in Kazan
Sunday October 19, 2003
The Observer
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Once the policeman's gas mask was sealed tight around his face, Denis, 18, lasted 90 seconds before passing out. After a heavy beating by police fists and batons, Denis had still not confessed to stealing a car radio from a garage near his home. So two officers handcuffed his hands behind his back and clamped the 'elephant mask', as it is called, to his bruised head. They shut its valves and then waited.
'I thought it was all over, that I was going to die,' said Denis, a hardy car mechanic whose experience of police torture has left him unable to walk the streets without a gang of friends by his side.
Once the detainee was unconscious, the militsia, as the Russian police are known, panicked and dumped him in a cell. After he regained consciousness, he had still not signed a confession, so the police gave up and released him.
His friend Artur, who was arrested for the same alleged crime and beaten in the next room, was less resilient. He had heard people can die in police cells and so signed a confession prepared for him by the police after two doses of the 'elephant mask'.
Denis and Artur are two young victims of Russian police torture, which human rights groups say is spiralling out of control. An investigation by The Observer has established that boys as young as 16 are being tortured with electric shocks, asphyxiation and heavy beating in order to extract confessions. Poorly paid and ill-disciplined police, under pressure from Ministers to keep crime clear-up rates high, are resorting to any means to get confessions.
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