B.—Ill-treatment and Tortures
Many pages could be covered with the description of the ill-treatment and the tortures in different prisons of Russia. Only some striking instances, however, can be mentioned here.
It is known through the daily Press that there were so many complaints about the misrule of the head of the Moscow police, General Neuhardt, that a special Commission was sent out by the Senate, under Senator Garin, to inquire into the affair. The head of the police just mentioned has been dismissed; perhaps he will be brought before a Court, and striking instances arising out of his misrule have already been communicated more or less officially to the daily Press.[1] Thus, one of the witnesses, M. Maximoff, examined by the Commission, who had been kept in one of the lock-ups of the Moscow police, deposed as follows:—
"Here I saw the most brutal treatment of the arrested people. The policemen used to beat those whom they would arrest as much as they liked. … It was terrible to live there day by day, and to think that either I would be killed too, or I myself would perhaps become a murderer in resisting these men. … They used to beat people in an awful way, sometimes quite innocent men, such, for instance, as an official of the Institution of the Empress Marie, Andrei Gavrilovitch Surkoff. He refused to enter a dark room where they wanted to put him, so they began to beat him with the butt-ends of their rifles, on the head, in the stomach, … everywhere. Finally, he grew wild and seized the nose of the secret agent, Orloff, with his teeth. Only then did they stop. It was then ten o'clock, and at midnight he had been sent to the lunatic asylum, and as far as I know he is quite mad by this time."
The names of the agents of the secret police who used thus to treat prisoners are given in full by the witness. The same witness describes a most terrible case of a woman who was arrested on suspicion of robbery; she would not declare herself guilty.
- ↑ Long abstracts in Russkiya Védomosti March 11, 1909.
