A court has found the evidence gathered by the investigating bodies of the Russia’s Investigative Committee for the Urals Federal District sufficient to convict senior operative official of penal colony No 18 of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area office of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, Lieutenant Colonel of internal service Yuri Sandrkin. He was found guilty of 2 counts of crimes under paragraph “a” of part 3 of article 286 of the RF Penal Code (excess of authority using violence or threat to use violence). In addition, Vadim Zhuravlyov, who is now serving a lifetime term in prison, was found guilty of a crime under part 5 of article 33, paragraph “a” of part 3 of article 286 of the RF Penal Code (complicity in excess of authority using violence or threat to use violence).
The court and investigators have found that, Sandrkin created a system of coercion of the inmates to self-incrimination in penal colony No 18 located in the village of Kharp in Priuralye District, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. He picked out the weakest from the ones serving a lifetime sentence and started to coerce them: he put them to the cells of inmates who used physical and psychological violence against them to make them incriminate themselves. The main role in coercion was played by Zhuravlyov. After the inmates could no longer stand violence and agreed to self-incrimination, Sandrkin passed them information they had to use to write the reports on their surrender. Moreover, the inmates had to write surrender reports on only big unsolved crimes (contract murders, crimes against children). The information on such crimes Sandrking either had had from officials of law enforcement bodies from other regions or had been made up by him hoping that it will match the real crimes. The geography of cases solved that way embraced the whole country from Novosibirsk to Kaliningrad. Over 8 months of 2010 alone Sandrkin got 190 surrender reports. By solving scandalous crimes of past years in this manner he wanted to mislead his superiors regarding his high achievements in service with the purpose to have them extend his contract in 2011 and give him bonuses and a promotion. The investigators found that one of the inmates had been made to write 28 surrender reports and another one 4 reports on very serious crimes, which they had not committed.
The court has sentenced Sandrkin to 3.5 years to be served in a minimum-security penal colony. He was also banned from occupying any positions in law-enforcement bodies for 1.5 years, Zhuravlyov got another 4 years in prison.
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