Former political prisoners say that they remember the moment of their arrest in every detail for the rest of their lives. Vasily Alexanyan’s “journey into the whirlwind” began on 6 April 2006, and his whole life came to an end on 3 October 2011. Squeezed in between these two dates was a great multitude of tragic events, and, without a doubt, the first date set the stage for the second and hastened its arrival…

The video recording that ended up at the Press Centre’s disposal, and which we are now giving you an opportunity to view, was made more than four and a half years ago during a session of the Supreme Court, and there is no longer anything sensational about all the things that were said by Vasily Alexanyan during this video conference link four and a half years ago. Well, not exactly. Individual fragments of this recording, which did not end up in any transcripts/records, are going to sound out broadly for the first time only today, and this means that the picture of the cruellest medieval inquisition of a brilliant lawyer, a noble person, that happened in the Moscow of the 21st century, will become that much fuller specifically today.

“Next they made the conditions of detention a lot worse for me. Here, this isolator, SIZO No. 99/1 – this is a special jail, it isn’t public at all, it’s quite a challenge to even find it. Not more than a hundred people are held there even at peak times. They held me in cells like these! They still remember Beria and Abakumov! The mildew, and the fungus, and the staphylococcus there eat your skin alive. This despite the fact that people know that my immunity has been destroyed. These are fascists, plain and simple!” – now these words of Vasily Alexanyan’s, on the contrary, did not end up in the video recording that follows below. But should we be forgetting them today?! We will not forget. And in strict compliance with the law we will not forgive.

On this video, Vasily Alexanyan happens to be fighting against the latest unlawful extension of his unlawful arrest. It is hard to watch. But watch we must…

May his memory be cherished.