‘They Had Been Beating Him For Several Minutes’
- 12.10.2024, 10:09
An eyewitness told how law-enforcers abused a deceased political prisoner from Vitsebsk.
On October 8, it became known about the death of Aliaksei Tamilau from Vitsebsk. A year ago, he was severely beaten in a temporary detention facility — Tamilau's health was never fully restored. Here is what a witness to that beating says.
Activist Yan Dziarzhautsau met Aliaksei Tamilau in a cell in the Vitsebsk temporary detention facility, where he ended up in March 2023, writes Nasha Niva.
Dziarzhautsau got there on charges of “distributing extremist materials”. Tamilau was accused of the same thing. He later told his cellmates that he was also detained for a small national flag that was found during a search.
According to Yan, during their first meeting, Aliaksei was in a good mental state. He talked to another prisoner — they recalled how 15 years ago Aliaksei, an employee of the service station, repaired that person's car. Tamilau remembered both the car itself and what exactly he did with the car.
Yan spent one day with Aliaksei in that cell. Dziarzhautsau talks about the conditions in the Vitsebsk temporary detention center — it does not add to his health:
“There were no mattresses, blankets or pillows on the beds. On the bunks there was a grid of metal rods about 1 cm thick, with a gap of about 15 cm between them. It is impossible to fall asleep on it, you only close your eyelids for 15-20 minutes — and that's it, because your head falls between these rods.
Three times a night the guards woke us up, did the so-called check. The light was on all night, the food was terrible, they did not give out medicine.”
As the interlocutor explains, such an attitude was part of the order from above — to put as much pressure on political prisoners as possible. Dziarzhautsau believes that this partly determined how the staff treated Aliaksei Tamilau later.
A day later, Aliaksei was transferred to another cell, and two days later to a third one — where Yan had ended up after the first cell.
The way Tamilau had changed was astonishing.
“It was obvious that the man was in a very nervous state, he was rambling.
At first, he listened to our conversation in silence, then he started swearing, made several people very angry. In the evening, he started behaving very strangely: knocking on the door, saying that the work day was over and he needed to go home, demanding that the door be opened. This continued intermittently all night.
While this was happening, a guard looked through the peephole on the door several times. He shouted at Aliaksei — like, stop, or you'll regret. But he kept rushing home, saying that the door was frozen. He imagined that his partner was standing next to him, told him to take a crowbar, break the ice and then open the door. 20-30 minutes passed, and he again asked if his partner had broken the ice, told him to take a flashlight if he couldn’t see.”
That’s how the night passed. Yan says that he and the other prisoners in that cell had the impression that Tamilau didn’t understand where he was and what was happening around him, as if he had gone crazy. The prisoners also heard that Aliaksei’s behavior had greatly angered the guards.
The worst thing happened in the morning:
“When the check was taking place, the guards took us out into the corridor, and he [Aliaksei] was told to stay in the cell. We went out, the check began, and several guards with batons burst into the cell, as if they had been scalded. Shouts and screams began — the guards were shouting at him and beating him. Judging by the sounds, perhaps not only batons were used, but also hands and feet. This went on for several minutes.
Then they took us into the cell and we saw him lying on the bunks and groaning. We asked him what hurt, only about ten minutes later he pointed to both his legs, his ribs and his head. We wanted to lift him up, but he groaned very loudly. There was a doctor among us, he examined him [Aliaksei] and said that his ribs were broken and his head was badly bruised, and his knee was also injured because he could not bend his leg. The doctor said that he needed to be taken to the hospital, he could not be kept in the cell.”
The prisoners in that cell began knocking on the door to draw the guards' attention to Tamilau's condition. About 15 minutes later, three guards carried Aliaksei out of the cell, and the prisoners did not see him again.
After that, Yan learned that Aliaksei was in intensive care with broken ribs, a fractured kneecap, and pneumothorax — one or more broken ribs had punctured a lung.
The law-enforcers threatened Tamilau that if he complained about the beating, a criminal case would be opened against him.
But later Dziarzhautsau and his friend, who was also serving a term in the Vitsebsk temporary detention facility at the time, were called in for a conversation about the beating of Aliaksei Tamilau. Yan believes that this could have been part of some internal prison investigation, but then he learned that the guards' actions were ultimately “recognized” as correct. The man categorically disagrees with this:
“If a person had mental health issues, he needed to be treated. There is a nurse on every shift in the temporary detention center. The guards had to call the nurse and open the door, and she had to examine him. If she saw that he was in an inadequate state, an ambulance had to be called and he had to be sent to the hospital. Clearly, the person did not understand where he was and what was happening to him."