The letter was published by Novaya Gazeta and cited by OVD-Info. Its author is a Group II disabled person with several autoimmune diseases, including psoriasis and arthritis.
Shabanov writes that he has been assigned the lowest prison caste status — that of an "obizhenny" ("offended one"). In June, cellmates barred him from using his own bed, the shared refrigerator and the kitchen, and threatened to beat him. In early July, a supply manager in one of the units poured hot tea over him and struck him on the head with a stool; the attacker was subsequently sent to a punishment cell and stripped of his position.
According to the inmate, the administration sent him to a punitive isolation cell, where he had to sleep on the floor because the bed, a shelf-like structure, was bolted to the wall. In total, he has filed more than two hundred complaints with oversight bodies, the prosecutor's office and the public monitoring commission. Members of the commission and prosecutors visited him, but, as Shabanov notes, his situation has not changed over several months.
He describes what is happening as a "system for suppressing the personality, a system of humiliation," steeped in corruption and mutual cover-up.
In an appeal to his mother, Shabanov says he is "downcast and broken by hopelessness" and fears he will not hold out. According to him, he is sustained by the remnant of a belief that he may be freed in a prisoner exchange between Russia and EU countries.
The saxophonist was sentenced to six years in a penal colony in a case concerning the justification of terrorism and calls to undermine state security. The grounds were posts criticizing Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime, as well as an attempt to upload a photo of Hitler to the Immortal Regiment website. The musician's case drew public attention after a hearing on extending his pretrial detention, at which he took off his T-shirt and showed skin covered in ulcers and spots.
As previously reported, during more than two years in pretrial detention Shabanov did not receive the necessary medical care, causing his illnesses to worsen.
On September 20, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, showed photographs of Russian political prisoners, including Shabanov, on CNN. He called on US presidential special representatives Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner to raise the issue of political prisoners in talks with the Russian authorities and to facilitate exchanges between Russia and Western countries.