The special service was given the right to organize departmental pre-trial detention facilities. This is a return to the practice of Stalin’s USSR in the era of terror of the 30-50s.
The FSB will get its own pre-trial detention centers. The State Duma has introduced a bill authorizing the security services to have departmental prisons for detaining persons involved in cases of state treason, espionage, terrorism and extremism. Previously, the FSB already had its own pre-trial detention centers, but in 2006, after Russia’s accession to the Council of Europe, the institutions were transferred to the FSIN. The transfer was made for the sake of excluding cases of human rights violations – it is quite difficult to control the observance of norms in the Chekist detention centers.
Now the power lobby in the State Duma explains the need for the return of FSB pre-trial detention centers by the fact that the country has “intensified intelligence and subversive activities” of foreign intelligence services, terrorist and extremist communities. And the Chekists are no longer satisfied with general pre-trial detention centers – they want to work with “their” detainees in their own conditions, without additional, albeit fictitious, control by the civilian Ministry of Justice.
Historical reference – departmental prisons of the state security agencies in Russia appeared during the mass repressions of the 1930s and were closed down en masse after Stalin’s death. In 2005, President Putin took the last prisons, including Lefortovo, away from the FSB, transferring them to the Ministry of Justice. Now everything is going back to its old ways.