When he got there, he was put in a cell with fourteen other inmates but only eight beds. The lights were left on twenty-four hours a day and the prisoners slept in shifts. This was clearly designed to impose sleep deprivation on him and the other detainees. Silchenko probably thought that after a week of fighting hardened criminals for a mattress, Sergei, a highly educated tax lawyer, would do anything Silchenko wanted.
Silchenko was wrong.
For the next two months Sergei was moved again and again and again. Each cell was worse than the last. One cell had no heat and no windowpanes to keep out the arctic air. It was so cold that Sergei nearly froze to death. Toilets — which consisted of holes in the ground — were not screened from the sleeping area. Sewage often bubbled up and ran over the floor. In one cell, the only electrical outlets were located directly next to the toilet, so he had to boil water with the kettle while standing over the rank latrine. In another cell, Sergei fixed a blocked toilet with a plastic cup, but it was chewed away by a rat in the night, and so much sewage covered the floor by morning that he and his cellmate had to climb up on the bed and chair like monkeys.
Worse than the physical discomfort for Sergei was the psychological torture. He was a devoted family man, and Silchenko tormented Sergei by refusing to allow him any contact with his family. When Sergei applied for his wife and mother to visit, Silchenko replied, «I reject your application. It’s not expedient for the investigation».
Sergei then applied for permission to speak to his eight-year-old son on the phone. «Your request is denied», Silchenko said. «Your son is too young for you to have a phone conversation». Silchenko also refused a request for Sergei’s aunt to visit because Sergei «couldn’t prove» she was a relative.
The purpose of everything Silchenko did was simple: to compel Sergei to retract his testimony against Kuznetsov and Karpov. Yet Sergei never would, and every time he refused, Silchenko made Sergei’s living conditions increasingly worse, further isolating him from the life he knew and the freedom he had so recently enjoyed.
It wasn’t until Sergei’s detention hearing in January 2009 that we learned of his horrible living conditions, his complete isolation from his family, and his mistreatment at the hands of Silchenko. It wasn’t until then that we heard of his steadfast refusal to recant. It wasn’t until then that a picture of Sergei’s strength began to take shape.
While most of the information we received that January was extremely grim, there was one bit of positive news. As Sergei was being moved around, he ended up sharing a cell with an Armenian accused of burglary. The Armenian was preparing for trial and desperately needed legal help. Without any law books or other resources, Sergei was still able to write a comprehensive defense for his cellmate. When the Armenian went to court, he was surprisingly acquitted and set free. As news of this spread, Sergei’s stock with the other prisoners shot up like a rocket. Overnight he became one of the most popular and well-protected inmates in the detention center.
The terrible images from Oz at least partially faded from my mind, and I slept a little easier after hearing that Sergei’s fellow inmates were not mistreating him.
Unfortunately, the authorities were.
In late February, Silchenko secretly moved Sergei to a special facility called IVS1. This was a temporary holding facility outside the main detention system where the police could do whatever they wanted to detainees. We suspected this was where Silchenko and the FSB were trying to coerce Sergei into signing a false confession. We had no idea what they did to Sergei there, but we assumed the worst.
For the next two or three months we didn’t hear much more. All we knew for certain was that no matter what Silchenko and the other officers at the Interior Ministry did to Sergei, he refused to sign anything that they put in front of him. When Silchenko told him to expose somebody, Sergei would say, «I will expose those officers who have committed the crimes». Eventually Silchenko must have realized that he had seriously underestimated this gentle tax lawyer.
The more they did to Sergei, the stronger his spirit became. In a letter to his mother he wrote, «Mama, don’t worry about me too much. My psychological resilience surprises me sometimes. It seems as if I can endure anything».
Sergei would not break. But while his will was unbreakable, his body was not. In early April he was moved again, this time to a detention center called Matrosskaya Tishina. There, he began to suffer from acute pains in his stomach. The episodes would last for hours and result in violent bouts of vomiting. By mid-June he had lost forty pounds.
Sergei was sick. But with what, we had no idea.
As Sergei’s detention dragged through the spring, a part of me wished that he would just give the Interior Ministry what it wanted. His doing so might have increased my problems with the Russian authorities, but that would be nothing if Sergei could have gotten out of that hellhole and ended up back in the arms of his family.
As each day passed, I became increasingly desperate to get him out of jail. Since I had no capacity to do anything in Russia, my only option was to pull out all the stops in the West.
The British government had made it clear that it was going to do next to nothing to help Sergei, so I began looking for international organizations that might be able to help. The first solid lead came from the Council of Europe, a multilateral organization that dealt specifically with human rights issues. Headquartered in Strasbourg, France, it was composed of forty-seven European countries, including Russia. A German MP and former justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, had recently been appointed by the Council to conduct an investigation into Russia’s criminal justice system, and she was looking for high-profile cases for her report.
We were aware that we were competing with many other Russian victims for her attention. At the time, there were roughly 300,000 people who had been unjustly imprisoned in Russia, so we didn’t have high hopes, but our lawyers contacted her office and she agreed to a meeting. Prior to that meeting, I spent a week putting together a presentation outlining each step of the crime and how it led to Sergei’s being taken hostage and mistreated in detention. When she saw the facts laid out so clearly and with so much evidence, she immediately agreed to take up his case.
In April 2009, she approached the Russian law enforcement agencies with a long list of questions. It was a positive development because the mere process of the Council of Europe asking the Russian government about Sergei could potentially free him — or at least get him better conditions.
Unfortunately, it did neither.
The Russian authorities refused a face-to-face meeting with Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, so she was forced to send her questions in writing. After a long silence, she received her answers.
Her first question was simply, «Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?»