Police have come to the office of the Moscow human rights organisation Open Space, Avtozak Live reports. The information was confirmed to Novaya-Europe by eyewitnesses present near the Open Space building.
Media outlet SOTA reports, citing its correspondent, that the police have grabbed a passer-by and dragged him inside the building, because the man looked at the search being conducted inside through a window.
Law enforcement agents have let a woman with a child leave the Open Space building. She says that the agents made the men inside lay face-down on the ground and made the women face the wall. The agents were checking people’s phone text chains and their bank transactions.
“People are standing facing the wall, hands behind their heads. [Police agents] were searching the front desk,” one of the eyewitnesses tells Novaya-Europe.
“No one is being let out of the [building], the visitors are standing facing the wall. Police vans are near the entrance,” the Open Space Telegram channel reports.
“A big number of people wearing balaclavas are in the building. The activists that had been present in the building were made to face the wall,” Avtozak Live says. According to the media outlet, the police have blocked exit from the building.
How many people are being kept in the building is unclear. The human rights organisation Open Space was hosting an event in support of persons of interest in the so-called “Tyumen case”.
Six Russian anti-fascists and anarchists — Kirill Brik, Deniz Aydin, Daniil Chertykov, Nikita Oleynik, Roman Paklin, and Yury Neznamov — were arrested in the cities of Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, and Surgut on 6 September; they are accused of creating a terrorist community and being part of it. They are also suspected of attempting to blow up a power plant with 300 grams of explosives, as per 66.ru. All six men said to have been tortured in law enforcement structures. Their case is referred to as the “Tyumen case”.
Last week, Russia’s Tyumen region Investigative Committee refused to initiate a criminal case on torture of Neznamov. According to Neznamov, he was beaten during an interrogation and then tortured — threatened with being shot and raped, suffocated with a plastic bag, tortured with electricity, and waterboarded. Several days earlier, it was reported that the Tyumen Investigative Committee did not respond to claims by five other figures of interest of the “Tyumen case”, despite the time period allocated for responding to a claim that a crime has been committed — 30 days — passing.
