Anna Politkovskaya was killed on 7 October 2006. Her articles, written from behind Chechnya’s blood-soaked information wall and barbed wire, became a voice of truth — the truth about what residents of the republic were experiencing as they became a convenient and powerless collective victim of the global “fight against international terrorism”.
On February 10, 2023, a 60-year-old political prisoner from Crimea, Dzhemil Gafarov, died in a pre-trial detention center in Novocherkassk, Rostov region. He needed kidney dialysis, but he was not provided with qualified medical care.
The Investigative Committee refused to initiate criminal proceedings against employees of the pre-trial detention center and the medical unit.
Earlier, lawyer Rifat Yakhin brought forward several charges: failure to provide medical care to Gafarov, abuse of power and negligence. According to him, before his death, the prisoner complained several times over the course of a month to the management of the detention center about deteriorating health: he had a burning sensation in his heart, a headache, high blood pressure, and difficulty breathing.
After the death of Dzhemil Gafarov, an autopsy showed that his death was due to acute cardiovascular failure, which was caused by atherosclerotic heart disease. The political prisoner died in custody a few days after the transfer.