Moscow Prison Installs Sunbeds, Skype

(Nov. 10) -- A notorious 19th-century prison in central Moscow is installing sunbeds, Skype and spa services for its long-suffering inmates.

Those perks were not afforded to Butyrka prison's previous inmates -- famous names like Adolf Hitler's nephew Heinrich and the Soviet writers Isaak Babel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Babel was executed at Butyrka in 1940. Solzhenitsyn was freed. He won the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature. Four years later, he was exiled.

Butyrka's reputation is for the kind of abuse and squalid conditions Solzhenitsyn chronicled. But the prison has come under increased scrutiny since another famous inmate, Sergei Magnitsky, died behind bars there last year. The 37-year-old lawyer for Russia's biggest equity investment fund was jailed after implicating Russian officials in alleged tax fraud. He was denied adequate medical treatment at Butyrka, and the Federal Prison Service acknowledged that it was at least partially to blame for his November 2009 death. He had been suffering from gallstones and other untreated illnesses.

Since then, prison officials have launched an informal campaign to improve their image, including the announcement of new perks for Butyrka inmates.

"We are developing additional medical services ... and even sunbeds will be put in place," prison director Sergei Telyatnikov told state-run radio station Vesti FM, according to Reuters.

Telyatnikov said inmates will also have access to sophisticated medical equipment, including ultrasound systems, which Magnitsky's lawyers say could have saved his life. Prisoners will be allowed to use Skype to stay in touch with relatives, and could even have spa facilities such as mud baths in the future, Telyatnikov said.

He said the sunbeds would be installed by the end of the year, but inmates will have to apply for permission to use them and will have to pay for the service, the BBC reported.

The changes at Butyrka have caused a stir in the Russian media, with the opposition website Kasparov.ru saying, "Nearly a year after Magnitsky, the prison is doing all it can to prove that it has improved its conditions," according to Agence France-Presse. The site is run by former chess champion turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov.

One expert has said that a "sunbed is not a priority need" for a prisoner. "This looks like some kind of joke," Zoya Svetova, a Russian prisons expert for the New Times weekly, was quoted by AFP as saying.

Earlier this year, Russia's prison service acknowledged that almost half of the inmates in its care are seriously ill, including many who are HIV positive but receive no treatment.