Footage of the body of Dmitry Batyrev, who was beaten to death in an Elista prison on 20 November.
In late November, video footage was released from a morgue in Kalmykia. It has shocked Russia. The video, recorded in Elista, the republic’s capital, shows the battered body of Dmitry Batyrev, a 28-year old inmate of the republic’s prison system. On the morning of 20 November, Dmitry Batyrev arrived at Kalmykia’s Penal Colony No.1 (PC-1) a healthy young man. By mid afternoon on the same day, Batyrev was dead.
Batyrev, it appears, was beaten to death by prison staff on the day he started his three-year sentence for grievous bodily harm at PC-1. Three suspects are now themselves behind bars, awaiting trial, but Batyrev’s relatives fear that two of them will remain free, and have good reason to think so.
