Analyst of the Moscow Federal Penitentiary Service left Russia due to fear of interrogations

Anna Karetnikova, a leading analyst at the Federal Penitentiary Service for Moscow, resigned from her service and left Russia. She said RBCthat she decided to leave the post she had been working in since 2016, after warning her superiors that she would face “unpleasant questioning and interrogations.”

According to Ms. Karetnikova, she was told that the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service had “big claims” against her. The next day, she was summoned to the CSS of the Federal Penitentiary Service, after which she was not allowed into the pre-trial detention center, explaining this by the order of her superiors. In the end, she decided to leave, “not waiting for how it all ends.”

“I sent a letter of resignation by mail on my own initiative, so as not to frame my management, this is a completely normal interaction. It seems that they agreed that I would be fired from January 18, ”said Anna Karetnikova.

According to her, one of the complaints was that she ran the SIZO Wall Newspaper Telegram channel, in which she “allowed her to express her opinions” about the SIZOs and prisons she visited. “Second is the involvement of charity and an attempt to provide those under investigation with what they should be provided by law, but unfortunately we are not provided with,” she says.

Now Mrs. Karetnikova is in France. She said she “wasn’t prepared for it to end so quickly.” Prior to joining the Federal Penitentiary Service, she was a member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission.