My name is Vladimir Pereverzin.
I was sentenced to 11 years in Russian prison
for the crime I never commit.
This is how crime works.
Russian prison system is just
instrument to manipulate people.
Human rights and the living condition,
just unbearable.
This is nonsense that cannot be in a civilized country.
Like in Navalny's case, person can disappear for two weeks,
and nobody knows where he is.
I was arrested 2004.
I was placed under surveillance,
and I was followed by a secret agent.
They make me a phone call to my mobile phone
and asked me to come to general prosecutor's office
for 20 minutes.
So I was taken to some police department.
It was night interrogation without any lawyers.
I did not understand
and didn't realize what I'm being accused of
for several months.
I left Yukos Oil Company
two years before my arrest.
Yukos Oil Company
was one of the biggest oil companies in Russia,
very well organized.
Khodorkovsky was one of the main owners of the company
and general manager of this company.
It was a politically motivated case because he claims
that Russian government make corruption scheme.
The goal of this process was just
taking the company from the owner.
They're accusing me of stealing crude oil.
I did not realize
the sense of this accusation
because every single gram of oil
and every single cent
was on the balance of the company.
I wasn't a high-profile employee of Yukos.
I didn't have any shares.
I didn't believe that I was arrested.
I made a phone call to my wife.
She thought that we were pranking her.
I was transferred from Butyrka to Matrosskaya Tishina.
Matrosskaya Tishina, it's a prison in the center of Moscow.
It consists of several barracks,
where I was kept the approximately first 10 days.
Was overcrowded with terrible conditions.
There was just 10 iron bunks
and about 25 prisoners.
So I didn't sleep for several days.
One moment I felt something
crawling on me and tickling.
I just turned out my T-shirt and saw body lice.
I'd never seen them before,
but I was sure it was lice.
Dozens, dozens.
You cannot understand what is going on with you
or where you are.
So, just like a dream, a bad dream.
I was transferred to a more-security cell.
I was placed together with contract killers
and gang leaders.
You are being watched by jailers every single minute.
I was sure that every 10 or 15 minutes
the jailers looked through
special glazok, peephole.
I spent in Moscow jails
2 ½ years.
Everybody always moved.
So jailers just called you,
you'd pick up your stuff, and you were moved to another.
It's some kind of pressure
to force me to confess to crimes which never exist.
Every court hearing, special guards bring you to the court.
I was sure that I would be released.
My innocence was so obvious for everybody.
I was sentenced for stealing
13 billion US dollars
and for stealing all crude oil produced
by one of the largest Russian oil companies.
I do understand this sounds ridiculous,
just like nonsense.
But for this nonsense,
I was sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment.
The first colony I was transferred
was a strict colony
in small village, Melekhovo.
We was transferred to Vladimir Prison,
and the next day we were transferred to Melekhovo.
Transferring from prison to colony
is the most dangerous moment for every prisoner
because the prisoners disappeared,
and nobody except jailers
knows where the prisoners is.
My transferring took
three or four days.
Ordinary train takes about a couple of hours.
But in our case, 24 hours
because we were placed in Stolypin wagons.
Originally, this carriage is for
four person,
but we were about 10 or 15 person
in this carriage with our stuff.
They stop eating and stop drinking
because the jailers will not let you go to the toilet.
It's common practice to beat the prisoners.
I was beaten by rubber batons, but not very severe.
The previous group of prisoners they beat quite severe.
I was sent to
a strict penal colony,
No. 6.
Strict regime means that according to the law,
only prisoners who were sentenced for serious crime
could be sent to this colony,
and who were sentenced not the first time.
There is a special dress code,
and the prison gave you shoes
you should wear all year round for several years.
Jacket doesn't make you warm.
Everything was made
to make prisoners feel not comfortable.
When a group of prisoners arrived from the prison,
they were placed to quarantine,
separate barrack where the prisoners
are being investigated by jailers.
And according to the laws,
they're allowed to be kept 10 days,
but the jailers have ways to keep them
for as much as they want.
It was the worst condition
in this camp.
You can imagine. There is big room,
let's say 30 two-story iron beds
close to each other.
You have to sleep face-to-face to another man.
It was not just toilet, it was just hole on the floor.
It's called parasha.
You can go to shower once a week.
There is one shower from the cell.
Six or five prisoners
should manage to wash themselves
for 15 minutes,
wash themselves and their clothes.
Most of prisoners, not most, all of them,
are dreaming to be moved
to another building.
I was the only prisoner
who spent so much time
in this barrack.
In three months, I was transferred to another barracks
for most-dangerous criminals.
Originally,
there is two types of camps in Russia,
red and black.
Red colony, completely managed by jailers.
There is strict regime,
no telephones, no drugs, no alcohol.
But in black colony,
the law is established by criminal code.
The thieves' code means just like
a law for all prisoners.
Criminal code or thieves' code
forbids violence between criminals.
So if you beat someone,
you would be punished by prisoners.
In a black colony,
prisoners should
follow this code.
In a black colony, there always,
someone in charge
reported to criminal gangs outside.
So, there is a special criminal tattoo,
some kind of label that someone belonged
to highest criminality and recognized as a thief.
There is thief stars tattoo
in the shoulder and the knees.
There is a chapter in my book
about untouchable.
It's a group of prisoners
ordinary prisoners cannot touch,
cannot shake hands,
cannot sit where they're sitting.
They used separate
dishes, spoons, tables,
and they did work
like cleaning toilet.
They sent them to this group of people, for example,
for terrible crime among prisoners.
Melekhovo, the first colony,
they have several production areas.
They produce uniforms for jailers,
shoes for jailers, and bricks.
I was keen to learn myself sewing.
Then I worked as a person packing hats.
I was admitted
to the group of people who produced bricks.
I woke up at 5 o'clock,
and we did some physical exercise.
According to the regime,
everyone should go and make morning exercise.
And then we went to the canteen, had breakfast,
and then we go to the production area
where we did these bricks.
And it was real slavery,
unloading trucks
with cement sacks.
Then we bring the sacks into the machine
to make cement.
We mixed and then we make some bricks.
There was some special ingredients
which makes this cement more strong.
There was some poison.
Definitely, some of this dust
comes to our lungs.
But we didn't have any choice.
But I'm still alive
and can talk to you, so.
The administration and jailers
are profiting from this production
because they use it for their personal needs.
Generally, I got for this
about $20 or $30 per month.
But I worked about 10 hours,
so it was unbelievably hard work.
Gulag, it's a prison camp system
which existed former Soviet Union,
and a lot of people were innocent
and sentenced to imprisonment.
Famous writers
wrote books about this system,
like Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, Yevgenia Ginzburg, for example.
Common practice in gulag system,
a lot of people died from hunger.
The keystone of the gulag
and the modern prison system in Russia,
prisoner is not a human.
Most important feature of gulag system,
that innocent people were imprisoned.
When you are imprisoned,
you realize that the jailers
can do whatever they want.
It's usual and common practice to torture prisoners
and force them to confess to crimes
they didn't commit.
They knew exactly
if I saw someone
being beaten by jailers,
I would make a complaint through my lawyer.
So that is why they keep eyes on me
and never did it just when I was near.
I was punished.
One jailer found some kind of knife.
Not really a knife.
You know, when you buy some stuff in a shop,
you have to have something to cut.
And I was immediately
placed to shizo.
Shizo, it's for punishment.
Small cells, iron bed fixed to the wall.
There is some small table
and small iron bench fixed to the floor,
so narrow that you cannot sit comfortable.
And I'm sure that
the width of this bench
was calculated by someone
in the jailer's institute system
just to make person
not comfortable to sit
but not fall down.
I hear some strange noise,
and I saw rats.
And they're coming from where?
They're coming from the hole for toilet.
People must put something
to close this hole in the floor
to prevent rats coming out.
When you come to this place,
there was a special
suit.
On your back, they placed big letters,
big white letters, "SHIZO."
And there is a special
group of jailers
who is responsible for guarding the colony from outside.
To try to escape from prisons, I think it's impossible.
I know one guy personally
who was trying to escape from the colony,
from Melekhovo.
And this guy was sentenced 24 years
for murder and for robbery.
During night,
he managed to escape.
He was catched by jailers quickly,
but he was free
maybe 15 minutes.
I saw him from the distance.
He was beaten, placed in the shizo.
They didn't make him
additional years for escape attempt.
They keep him silenced to save their reputation.
Jailers can recognize you as a regime violator very easily.
Like in Navalny case,
they gave him a suit
smaller in several size.
He was recognized as a regime violator
for just unbutton.
But if you have small prison jacket,
you cannot do it another way.
Who is responsible for this violation?
This violation let other jailers
put him in the shizo.
It's completely their responsibility.
They pressed him every minute.
Russian prison
have much less rights.
You cannot sue the jailers.
Extremely rare cases
where you can
initiate a trial against jailers
because in Russia,
they have much more instrument
to influence on prisoners.
US is more a free society,
much more than Russia.
When I come to another colony
with officially
more easy regime,
Vladimir, its colony is a general regime.
Toughest day during
my imprisonment,
they make me a violator of regime.
I didn't agree,
and I sent a complaint to the court.
I was placed in a more
isolated barrack,
and they tried to press me.
I started writing complaints
for administration colony.
And when I sent my complaints,
the jailers stopped allowing other prisoners to sleep.
And the other prisoners came to me and asked,
"You place own interest higher than our interest.
So because of you, most of the prisoners
from our barracks suffered."
So what should I do?
There is a way to go
to another colony or another barrack.
So I knew that the only way,
I just had intention
to just injure myself
and go to the hospital.
Maybe five or four other prisoners
jumped on me,
and there was some kind of
a little fight between us.
And, but anyway, I managed to cut myself,
not as severe as I planned.
But I remember this moment very well.
I cried, "Freedom to political prisoners!"
Thanks to this accident,
I was free
because the jailers were scared to deal with me.
They knew that you can
do something serious.
And then they sent me to Pokrov.
When I came to this colony,
the deputy came to me and told me,
"Look, how are you going to stay with us?
Are you going to complain? What do you want?"
He's scared of me,
and he didn't want to have problems
with injured and with scandal
with lawyers and et cetera.
So we made some kind of agreement.
I stopped complaining,
and he didn't
press on me.
My sentence was reduced.
I didn't believe that I could be released.
My
terms come to the end suddenly for me.
Every prisoners are released about 10 o'clock.
My son, my wife, my friends
were supposed to come
by 10 o'clock to the colony,
and I was going to make some kind of farewell party
to other prisoners.
It's a criminal tradition.
So I bought some tea, some sweets in the shop.
It's a real celebration.
But I was woken up
before general wake up.
They gave me my belongings.
I was released about 6 o'clock
before other prisoners wake up
because they're scared.
They're scared of press conference.
When you're released,
they give you some certificate of release,
some money from your personal account.
I received everything, every document, all my stuff,
money, all documents, and came out from the prison.
I was really scared.
There is one car standing
near the exit from the colony and
some unknown people standing.
From my previous experience,
I knew they can do whatever they want.
They can kill me,
and nobody will find my body.
They drive me to Vladimir bus station.
I get out of the car.
I thought, "What should I do?"
But I have some money from my account, 1,000 rubles.
And I went to the café
in the bus station,
bought ice cream,
ice cream and coffee.
My relatives were thinking that I would be released
about 10 o'clock.
They were on the way from Moscow in a private car.
And I took one taxi driver
and asked him to make a phone call to my wife.
I was surprised to remember number
because it was not so easy.
And I make a phone call,
asked them that I'm on the way.
It was like a dream.
We drink Champagne.
We burned my belongings, my suit.
It's tradition.
And we came to home.
So I was lucky.
And then I was just, you know,
enjoying just simple things.
I was sitting on the chair,
laying on the sofa.
I enjoy every moment in freedom.
Before prison, I didn't pay any attention
to just wearing comfortable shoes,
for example.
And you can stay on a hot shower
as long as you want.
Some small things.
I don't feel angry.
I want to be apologized.
I don't want any revenge,
but I want official acquisition.
Number of political prisoners
increased tremendously.
I was released in 2012,
and I was almost the only one.
But now a lot of people
are sentenced for nothing.
Every political prisoner is in danger.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, he's in danger.
It's terrible things,
what happened to Alexei Navalny.
He was murdered by jailers.
The first colony Navalny was held, it was Pokrov.
Then he was transferred to Melekhovo,
and then he was transferred to Kharp,
where he was murdered.
I was in shock,
but I wasn't surprised.
Vladimir Putin is trying to threaten all his opponents.
Navalny was isolated from other prisoners,
and the jailers keep eyes on him 24 hours.
Every jailer had video register,
and definitely something happened.
But authorities trying to hide.
Where are all these records?
Why don't publish these records?
It's terrible when so obvious
innocent people are in prison.
It's terrible that we're coming back to the gulag times.
I would prefer
my book wouldn't be topical at the moment
because my personal story
is nothing to compare to
another's stories.
My book is called "The Prisoner."
This is my personal experience.
I would like to share with everybody
to understand whom they're dealing with.
It's a story of personal,
ordinary men like me.
So it happens to anyone in Russia.