A teenager has been sentenced in Russia to five years in a penal colony for allegedly taking part in the Russian Freedom Legion.

Arseny Turbin, a 16-year-old schoolboy, who was sentenced in Russia to five years in an educational colony under the article on participation in a terrorist organisation (part 2, article 205.5 of the Criminal Code) for allegedly taking part in the Russian Freedom Legion, has lost 17 kilograms of weight in Moscow’s Vodnik pre-trial detention centre-5. This was reported on Saturday, 12 October, by a group of support for the political prisoner. the political prisoner’s support group reported in Telegram with reference to his mother Irina Turbina, who visited her son in the remand centre.

According to her, the teenager now weighs 52 kilograms, although before he entered the pre-trial detention centre his weight was 69 kilograms. ‘Arseniy says he tries to eat, but often has no appetite, as he is very worried about the way he was treated in the criminal case situation and where he is now,’ the woman said.

She added that another prisoner, named Azizbek, who beat up a schoolboy in the isolation centre, was put in a punishment cell. According to Turbina, ‘when asked by the head of educational work and the tutor about what Arseniy had done to him and why he was behaving this way towards him, Azizbek had nothing to say, as he felt like it, and he started to be impertinent to the staff of the pre-trial detention centre and talk to them on a first-name basis’.

 

A schoolboy was jailed for leaflets against Putin

In June, the 2nd Western District Military Court in Moscow sentenced Arseny Turbin, who was 15 at the time, to five years in prison. According to the Russian prosecutor’s office, the teenager was a member of the pro-Ukrainian legion ‘Freedom of Russia “ and distributed proclamations ”Do you need such a president?’. Turbin denied that he had joined the legion and claimed that he had pasted the leaflets according to his beliefs, while the protocol of his interrogation was forged by the investigators.

Earlier, Irina Turbina said in a commentary to ‘Ponuchno.Media’ that Arseniy was poisoned by his cellmates in the pre-trial detention centre.

The Memorial human rights project recognised Arseniy Turbin as a political prisoner.

 

Source: dw.com