Yekaterina Taganova, the wife of Russian activist Roman Taganov, who faces criminal charges for attacking officers of the law, has posted two videos showing the police beating up her husband in front of their seven-year-old son. He was beaten up on 7 March in Maykop, the capital city of Russia’s Republic of Adygea, by police officers in plain clothes, Mediazona news outlet reports.
According to Yekaterina, both videos were added to Taganov’s case file. “One video was shot by an FSB officer from a nearby car, the other was shot by the attacker himself, a senior special case investigator of the Centre for Countering Extremism and Terrorism,” she told Mediazona.
The videos show a man in plain clothes attempting to grab Taganov, who was trying to ride off on a scooter with his son. In response, the activist punched the attacker, after which another man in plain clothes came to his colleague’s aid. They knocked Taganov down to the ground and started beating him up, with one of the officers putting his knee on the activist’s neck. Meanwhile, Taganov’s son was crying and attempting to stand up for his father, but he was taken away by a third plain clothes officer.
“Turns out that it was a planned operation that even involved an FSB officer. He was recording everything from a nearby car. My husband was attacked by the officers of the Republic of Adygea Centre for Countering Extremism and Terrorism,” Yekaterina said.
“There is a version that my husband was attacked because his son was wearing clothes in the same colours as the Ukrainian flag. My husband also wore a green ribbon, but did not refer to it as an anti-war symbol publicly,” she wrote earlier. The fact that her son was wearing a yellow winter hat and a blue jacket was an accident, Taganova stressed.
Yekaterina told Mediazona that on 7 June, she was visited by a uniformed police officer that was not involved in the beating, who showed her a video of the attack on her husband. “This police officer asked me whether I thought that the attack might have been related to the colours of the clothes my son was wearing,” she said.
According to Yekaterina, after what happened, her son’s epileptic seizures have become more frequent. Earlier, Taganova was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband does not admit his guilt.
