YEKATERINBURG, November 21 (RIA Novosti) – An employee of a Russian drug rehab center run by an opposition politician was convicted Thursday of detaining patients against their will.
Igor Shabalin was given two years and four months in prison for unlawful imprisonment, but released from the courtroom because of the time he had spent in pretrial detention.
Shabalin was accused of locking up and handcuffing nine female patients of Yevgeny Roizman’s City Without Drugs foundation in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals.
Both the prosecution and the defense said they would appeal the sentence.
City Without Drugs is known for its hardline approach to patients, who are often admitted to rehab without their written consent – usually at relatives’ request – and subjected to harsh methods to wean them off their addictions.
A foundation employee was convicted on similar charges in 2010, but given a suspended sentence on appeal.
Roizman, an ex-lawmaker with a criminal record from Soviet times, enjoys a vigilante’s reputation over his relentless campaign against drug dealers.
His popularity was reflected in his win over the pro-Kremlin candidate in September mayoral elections in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-biggest city.
Roizman, 51, is affiliated with tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, who runs the moderately oppositional party Civic Platform and who claimed to have come under pressure from the Kremlin for backing Roizman.
Russia has 8.5 million drug users, mainly due to an inflow of opiates from Afghanistan, according to a government report released in September.
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