Two additional Voronezh-based believers reported being tortured during detention. Both are imprisoned and one has a broken rib

Believers Yuriy Galka and Anatoliy Yagupov reported about the inhumane treatment through a lawyer, who visited them in the detention center. On the day of their detention they were strangled with bags and beaten, demanding a confession. Earlier, believers Bokov, Katyrov and Korol described the beatings.

Lawyers tried to get to Yagupov and Galka from the moment they were taken to pre-trial detention center #1 in Voronezh region, but the lawyer was allowed to see them only after 2 weeks, July 29 and 30.

It became known that 44-year-old Yuri Galka had a broken rib. The torture began during the search and continued during the interrogation. The FSB officers twisted his hands behind his back and put the bag over his head, tightening until Yuri began to suffocate. At this time, he was beaten, breaking a rib. He was required to confess to extremism and links with Jehovah's Witnesses. Upon admission to the pre-trial detention center, a rib fracture was revealed, but the staff of the institution, taking advantage of Yuriy's state of shock, wrote in the documents that he received injuries by household.

51-year-old Anatoliy Yagupov was tortured in a similar way: he was put a bag over his head and beaten on a chair, on which the interrogators put a Voronezh resident.

A total of five Voronezh Jehovah's Witnesses are now complaining about torture by law enforcement officials. Despite the torture, the Voronezh believers refused to admit guilt for crimes they had not committed. They recorded injuries in a medical facility to protest the actions of law enforcement officers.

On July 13, 2020 more than 110 searches of Jehovah's Witnesses houses were conducted in Voronezh and the region.