RUSSIA

Observer: Torture now routine for Putin's police

Once the policeman's gas mask was sealed tight around his face, Denis, 18, lasted 90 seconds before passing out. After a heavy beating by police fists and batons, Denis had still not confessed to stealing a car radio from a garage near his home. So two officers handcuffed his hands behind his back and clamped the 'elephant mask', as it is called, to his bruised head. They shut its valves and then waited.
'I thought it was all over, that I was going to die,' said Denis, a hardy car mechanic whose experience of police torture has left him unable to walk the streets without a gang of friends by his side.