Trepashkin's defenders accuse law enforcement bodies of breaching his rights

The advocate and public defenders of the former FSB colonel Mikhail Trepashkin, who is serving his term at a general custody colony for disclosure of state secrets, have told in detail about how law enforcement bodies are breaching his rights.

"We see that from the very beginning the case was accompanied by gross violations of the law - at every stage we watched his rights of the prisoner encroached on," Lev Ponomaryov, executive director of the all-Russian movement "For Human Rights," who is also Trepashkin's public defender, has told today at the press conference.

Vladimir Shaklein, another public defender, has noted that Trepashkin had been kept in a solitary cell from March 9 to September 26, 2007, on the grounds not stipulated by the law. Now, according to the defender, Mr Trepashkin is placed in a double-men cell, however, the conditions of his custody "still remain torturous."

According to the defender, the inmate suffers from acute dog's wool allergy, but the facility guards are keeping their sentry dogs under the cell window, which makes his custody conditions intolerable.

Advocate Lyubov Kosik has stated that the colony administration is using any occasion to subsequently impute Trepashkin of violating the custody regime.

The PRIMA-News Agency reports that the document named "Expert's Opinions on Illegality of Measures Applied by Prison Managers to M. Trepashkin," prepared by Sergey Nasonov, an expert of the Independent Expert's and Legal Board, was disseminated at the press conference.