When Lefortovo is removed from the jurisdiction of the Federal Security Service and placed like all other penitentiary facilities under the Justice Ministry, the legend of the much-feared, high-security prison may finally draw to a close.
At Lefortovo, prisoners suffer extreme isolation, and routine prison regulations are followed to a depressing degree, but this also can make time spent there more tolerable, former inmates say.
“I feel a strange pity for the place. After the FSB gives it away, the super-orderly Lefortovo will turn into a regular, stinking jail,” said writer Eduard Limonov, who spent 15 months in Lefortovo in 2002 and 2003 as the FSB investigated his radical National Bolshevik Party. (more…)