Week-ending 24 July 2020
On Friday, 24 July, Ruslan Kostylenkov, a defendant in the controversial New Greatness case, accused police of beating and sexually assaulting him in order to obtain a confession. The Guardian reported that Kostylenkov, who faces a possible sentence of up to seven and a half years if convicted, ‘accused five police officers of tying him to a chair, beating him in the kidneys, and then sodomising him with the handle of a kitchen mallet so that he would confess on camera to belonging to an anarchist organisation.’ He is charged with involvement in an extremist youth organisation that allegedly plotted to overthrow the Russian government.
