In Rostov, advocate of defendant, accused of terrorism, claims poor conditions in SIZO

On November 10, at the Rostov Regional Court the lawyer of Pavel Efremov, the defendant in the case of terrorism, claimed violation of rights for defence and poor conditions of detention of the defendant in SIZO (pre-trial prison).

"During my client's detention in custody in SIZO, he had been five times transferred from ward to ward; yesterday, on November 9, I spent several hours before he was found at all. He was kept in dungeon. He is being kept in unsanitary conditions: bricks scale off in wards, there is no toilet and no running shower and it is cold there. I believe that they try to exert psychological pressure on him. Besides, they deprive him of his right to defence, since I cannot meet him. I want to appeal to the court to investigate all this," stated the lawyer Shilov in the trial.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the 29-year-old Pavel Efremov, the 31-year-old Dmitry Fedorushkin, and the 22-year-old Alexander Svetlitsky are accused of illegal transportation of explosives and attempt to commit a terror act on April 23, 2010. An improvised explosive device (IED) was found and defused near the building of the migration service in Rostov-on-Don. The suspects were detained on April 30, 2010. On November 1 the hearings on the criminal case have been started.

The lawyer of the defendant Efremov filed a motion to the court to investigate in what conditions his client was being kept in SIZO.

After the meeting, the judges concluded that this issue did not correspond to the subject of consideration by the court session. "This is not a case for legal proceedings. You are the lawyers and you know where you should appeal to in such cases," concluded the judge.

Let us note that at present the "Caucasian Knot" has no comments from the SIZO staff on violations of the rights of the defendant Efremov.