Imprisoned Ingush resident goes on third hunger strike in defence of his rights

Alaudin Almurziev, a native of Ingushetia, who is serving his sentence in the Kamchatka Region, has gone on his third hunger strike demanding to stop the lawlessness, perpetrated by the colony staff, his mother Raishat Kokurkhoeva told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Almurziev was sentenced by the Supreme Court of North Ossetia to 23 years in prison on charges of an armed attack on a convoy of armoured law enforcers' vehicles. The Russian Supreme Court reduced the sentence by one year. The prisoner himself and his relatives believe that the case was fabricated. Almurziev has already served six years of his term; now he is kept at Colony No. 6 of the Kamchatka Region.

On July 25, colony employees got into Almurziev's cell and severely beat him, said Raishat Kokurkhoeva. Also, according to her story, her son's cellmate was beaten.

"Employees of the colony were in masks. They beat my son so cruelly that now he cannot stand on his feet. They broke everything in the cell and tore his clothes, saying: 'We'll make you love Russians! You'll obey to us!' It is all because of national-based hostility," said the mother.

She added that Alaudin and his cellmate were keeping their full hunger strike for the third day in protest against harassment by the colony administration and demanding that such cases should not occur again.

The staff of Colony No. 6 of the Kamchatka Region neither refutes nor confirms the information about acts of violence, saying that they had not heard of any hunger strikes or beatings of prisoners by colony employees.

In June 2011, Alaudin Almurziev already declared a hunger strike, demanding to stop violating his rights. Then his mother argued about the moral and physical violence against her son at the colony. In January 2012, Almurziev's 17-day-long protest hunger strike was reported by his grandmother Minovsi Almurzieva. According to her story, her grandson was kept in a dungeon for four months in a row.