Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) could sue Russian dissident Ildar Dadin after he accused prison guards of carrying out systematic abuse, the TASS news agency reported Tuesday.
Dadin could be sued for 500,000 rubles ($8,133) to cover the costs of a medical examination he requested in a bid to prove he was being tortured.
The FSIN will decide whether or not to go through with the suit after they finish calculating their financial losses, said Valery Maksimenko, Deputy Director of the Penitentiary Service.
Maksimenko denied all allegations made by Dadin, but admited that beatings and violence are a "common problem" in the prison system. A new group of private security officers has been created to respond more rapidly to reports of violence in the correctional system, he said..
Ildar Dadin was the first Russian to be convicted of repeatedly violating the law on unauthorized demonstrations in 2015. He is now serving two and a half years in jail.
In September, he was transferred to a penal colony in Segezh, where he later complained of systematic torture in a letter sent to his wife. Colony officials claim their medical examiners found no evidence of the beatings Dadin had described, but in December he was transferred to another penal colony.
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