Convicts in Belarusian colony assembling missile bodies for Russia, ex-con says
Colony No. 9 in Horki / nash-dom.info
Correctional Colony No. 9 in Horki fulfills orders for the Russian army, human rights activists from the "Legal Initiative" have learned from one of the former prisoners who served his sentence in this colony.
Most of the prisoners in the colony work in woodworking. "Many of them make boxes for shells of the Russian army - especially for GRAD missiles. Nobody even hides it. There is a huge order, and the prisoners are forced to make them," says a former prisoner.
According to him, the machines there often malfunction, which has led to deaths.
The man says that at the turn of 2023-2024 a secret workshop was built in the colony. Political prisoners are not allowed to work there, as they are considered unreliable.
"And no one is allowed to tell anyone what they are doing there. Everyone - both civilian employees and prisoners who work there - has a non-disclosure agreement. And the workshop itself is surrounded by barbed wire. But we all live together, in the same units. And if there are people we can trust, the prisoners naturally share information among themselves. After a while, everyone knew what they were doing in the secret workshop," says the ex-convict.
According to him, missiles for the Russian army are assembled there, but without warheads. The frames and some components of these missiles are brought to Horki. The prisoners assemble them, paint them, and then these bodies are sent from the territory of the colony to the place where the missiles are stuffed.
According to the ex-prisoner, it is either a large or very urgent order, because the prisoners work in two shifts - from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. Prisoners do not have the opportunity to refuse to work.
"Considering that the prisoners in Horki are practically starved to death, the people there literally survive. Many just go crazy. Personally, I have seen people there who are mentally incapacitated. I have also seen people who look like walking skeletons. In Gorki, they feed you just to keep you alive, to move your legs, to be able to work on the program. And, as it turned out, not only for Lukashenka's regime," the man says.
