Inside hellhole Russian prison holding US journalist where Stalin held mass ... trends now
Inmates have described scenes of isolation and intense interrogations inside cramped cells at Russia’s notorious Lefortovo Prison where Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been locked up.
The US citizen, 31, was arrested in Yekaterinburg in the Urals over spying charges after he visited the country's fourth-largest city to write up about the feared Wagner group.
He appeared in Moscow's Lefortovo district court on Thursday where he pleaded not guilty and it was ruled that he should be held in pre-trial custody until May 29, according to Russian media.
The prison where he is being held has a long and violent history. It is where political prisoners were mass executed under Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and where KGB officers tortured opponents.
It also currently houses former US marine veteran Paul Whelan who was handed a 16-year jail sentence in 2020 after being accused of spying.
Russia’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, built in 1881, has a long and violent history
Inmates have described scenes of isolation and intense interrogations inside cramped cells at the facility where Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been locked up
Pictured: The WSJ journalist was escorted out of Lefortovo court in Moscow, flanked by authorities. He was seen piling back into the law enforcement van, keeping his head down
Gershkovich, wearing a yellow-colored hooded jacket, was seen being taken from the back of a blacked-out Russian police vehicle before being walked into the court.
He was later seen piling back into the law enforcement van, keeping his head down.
The journalist will likely spend the first ten days at Lefortovo Prison in an isolated cell, which is reportedly the protocol for foreigners accused of spying.
It is used as a technique to wear inmates down and make them more susceptible to the interrogations.
Inmates are reportedly dressed in blue robes and locked in tiny single cells and claim their belongings are taken away from them during this 'quarantine time'.
Zoya Svetova, who observes prison conditions with the Public Monitoring Commission of Moscow, a non-government organization, said officials want to psychologically break foreign prisoners.
'This period is some sort of humiliating time meant to "cook" them,' she previously told the Daily Beast.
'People feel naked, left without any private belongings.
'No other prison in Moscow has more hostile treatment during the quarantine period than Lefortovo.
'We once met a Turkish national in that part of the prison for foreign inmates. He managed to get a fur hat and wore it constantly. He was freezing'
Gershkovich will be stuck in a cramped cell which spans eight square metres and will only be allowed to leave for one hour a day under confinement rules.
It is believed to have a bed made from iron bars with a paper thin mattress and a downed pillow, a sink and a toilet bowl.
Phones calls are banned and only visits by lawyers are allowed but Gershkovich can receive letters although they are read by prison officials first.
The prison was used for mass executions during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge between 1936 and 1938
It was also an infamous KGB prison and interrogation site for political prisoners for decades
Pictured: Evan Gershkovich. Moscow has been accused in the past of arresting
