12 July 2012 

On 9 July 2012 Raisat Yusupovna Elmurzaeva, resident of Dagestan, applied to Memorial Human Rights Center. She wrote that on 6 July she was contacted by her son Zaur Muradovich Gasanov, born 1988, who is serving a sentence in Investigatory Isolation Ward (SIZO) No. 1, Makhachkala. He reported that from 6 July a hunger strike was declared in the SIZO, in connection with the worsening relations of the SIZO administration to the prisoners. Late at night, people in masks enter the cells containing prisoners, beat and insult those who are in the special unit with the words: “You aren't people, you should be burnt”. The beatings are accompanied with unprintable cursing and humiliation. In the words of Gasanov, the worsening of imprisonment conditions began after the appearance of a new deputy head of SIZO No. 1, Daud (he did not remember the surname). [Read more]