16-Year-Old Russian Political Prisoner Reports Beatings in Moscow Detention Center

A 16-year-old Russian schoolboy, considered Russia’s youngest political prisoner, has reported that he is being beaten by his cellmates at a Moscow detention center, wrote The Moscow Times, citing Mediazone on October 8.

Arseniy Turbin, who is serving a five-year sentence at a juvenile correctional facility for allegedly attempting to join the anti-Kremlin Freedom of Russia Legion, revealed that a fellow inmate named Azizbek has been physically assaulting him.

“Tonight after 6:00 p.m. he hit me on the head with his fist on the bed two times. The atmosphere is very heavy, critical. Azizbek beat me and told me that at night I would be f***ed,” Turbin wrote in an Oct. 1 letter to his mother. “The night will be very hard. But I will hold on.”

Turbin’s mother told Mediazona that her son had also been placed in solitary confinement for a week in September following a conflict with his cellmates.

In June, Turbin, then 15, was sentenced to five years in a juvenile correctional facility on charges of “participating in terrorist activities.” Russian authorities accused him of attempting to join the Freedom of Russia Legion, a paramilitary group fighting alongside Ukraine, which Moscow has classified as a terrorist organization.

Mediazona reported that Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) investigators falsified evidence in Turbin’s case. While the FSB claimed Turbin admitted during interrogation that he planned to join the legion, a transcript published by the outlet revealed that he made no such confession, despite the agents' attempts to pressure him.

Last fall, Russia’s financial monitoring agency added him to its list of “terrorists and extremists.”