by Mikhail Zakharov
[REGNUM] On the morning of October 26, it became known that a mass escape of prisoners from a local penal colony (IC) had occurred in the Lipetsk region. This was reported by the region's governor, Igor Artamonov. "Six prisoners escaped from penal colony No. 2. At the moment, all operational services are focused on finding them; an interdepartmental group is working," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
As reported by the regional department of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), the escapees were able to escape through an underground tunnel. It is specified that the penal colony employees first discovered a manhole, after which they began checking the cells and discovered the absence of six prisoners.
It is known that the escaped criminals were from Central Asia - five citizens of Uzbekistan and one citizen of Tajikistan, previously convicted of rape, pedophilia, robbery, and drug possession. The oldest of them is 28 years old, the youngest is 19.
Before their imprisonment, some of them did not even have a fixed place of residence in Russia, but there are also those who were officially employed. Now law enforcement agencies will have to figure out what exactly brought the fugitives together and pushed them to commit a crime. It will also be determined whether they were involved in extremist communities.
SOME HAVE ALREADY BEEN CAUGHT
The personnel of the combined detachment of the Federal Penitentiary Service was alerted, search posts were set up and preliminary data on the convicts was sent out. The "Interception" plan was announced in Lipetsk, and law enforcement officers began checking vehicles at the entrances and exits of the city.
To search for and detain the fugitives, employees of the central office of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia were sent to the Lipetsk region; an operational headquarters was also formed with the participation of employees of the search department of the agency.
By midday on October 26, it became known that two escaped criminals had been detained near Tambov - they tried to resist, but to no avail. Later, two more fugitives were caught in the village of Ulusarka in the Lipetsk region.
| That was fast. |
Their remaining accomplices are still being sought by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Russian National Guard, the FSB and the FSIN Directorate for Lipetsk Oblast in both regions. Presumably, they could have headed towards Kazakhstan, then gone to Uzbekistan and evaded Russian justice.
At the same time, Igor Artamonov calls on the region's residents not to panic and trust only verified sources of information regarding the search activities. " I would like to note separately that we expect a large number of leaks and fake news related to the escape, " the regional governor emphasizes. " The information war continues, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces will not miss the opportunity to take advantage of this situation."
THEY DUG FOR SIX MONTHS
The Investigative Committee of Russia has opened a criminal case on the fact of negligence of the employees of the FSIN of the Lipetsk correctional colony, from which dangerous criminals escaped. It is assumed that the escape of prisoners was carried out due to improper performance of their duties by officials of the correctional institution. The prosecutor's office of the Lipetsk region has joined the case, an official investigation has also been ordered in the colony itself, interrogations and inspections are being conducted.
The investigation will have to find answers to questions that are logical in such a situation: how the prisoners managed to hide the shovels from the colony administration, how they got rid of the earth they dug to create the manhole, why their actions were not recorded on camera, and whether they had accomplices on the territory or outside the penitentiary institution. Especially since, according to available information, the escape was planned for six months (!), and they dug underground passages several meters long.
It is claimed that the tunnel was noticed by the FSIN officers the day before, but for almost a day the penal colony officers tried to find the escapees on their own - allegedly the law enforcement officers from Moscow joined them only on Saturday morning. In addition, it is interesting that the penal colony officers first discovered the tunnel, and only then discovered the absence of six prisoners - the question arises as to how the prisoner count was carried out there.
In this situation, it is not surprising that the escaped prisoners managed to calmly cover a considerable distance to the neighboring region. “ And they had the whole night to commit new crimes,” Marina Akhmedova, a member of the Presidential Council for Human Rights and editor-in-chief of the Regnum news agency, notes in her Telegram channel. “Some of them were convicted of sexual crimes against minors, and they have nothing to lose.”
It should be noted that the institution's employees had previously been held accountable for violating their official duties: contrary to the rules, the inmates of the penal colony arranged for themselves a "resort life" with phones, barbecues and alcohol. Meanwhile, the media publishes information that the colony in the Lipetsk region was recently involved in another scandal - an attempt to smuggle drugs and phones onto the territory of the institution.
SCANDAL AFTER SCANDAL
On the one hand, employees of other Russian correctional colonies have repeatedly successfully thwarted attempts by criminals to escape to freedom. Thus, on September 24, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, law enforcement officers managed to thwart the plans of an extremist group of three prisoners.
According to the investigation, prisoners of the Federal Penitentiary Institution IK-6 of the Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Nizhny Novgorod Region propagated radical religious dogmas among convicts, and also spent several months preparing a mass escape.
However, this year there have been several high-profile cases involving penitentiary institutions. In particular, on June 16, six prisoners in Rostov-on-Don managed to escape from the cells of the local pretrial detention center and took two employees of the detention center hostage. Then the security forces worked quickly and efficiently, eliminating the hostage-takers in just a few minutes.
Unfortunately, in August, when prisoners took hostages in the IK-19 penal colony in Surovikino, Volgograd Region, it was not possible to avoid casualties - three employees of the institution died. It should be noted that in these cases, radical ideas figured in the motives that pushed the prisoners to commit crimes. Their growth in prisons has been increasingly noted recently, but it is unlikely that this alone can explain all the existing problems.
It is certainly possible that the crimes could have been facilitated by corruption among the employees. However, one can doubt the sufficient motivation of even law-abiding employees of the FSIN with their very, very low level of salaries. In addition, in order to stop a crime, people are needed who will react to preparations for committing a crime. In the current conditions of understaffing, it is not so easy to keep track of those who do not stop engaging in illegal activities even behind bars.
What contributed to today's incident is yet to be determined by the investigation, but the incident, unfortunately, is far from the first in a series of failures committed in Russian correctional institutions.