Russian adult content provider forced to entrap gay men online by Dagestan police ( novayagazeta.eu )

A Russian male adult content provider was detained in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan for the second time in two weeks on Wednesday after reportedly being forced to entrap gay men online by the republic’s police.

Matvey Volodin, a Moscow resident who performs under the name USSRboy, was detained by plain clothes police officers as he left a temporary detention centre where he had been held for 10 days, North Caucasus SOS, a Telegram crisis group devoted to helping LGBTQ+ people in the region, said.

A lawyer Volodin spoke with told North Caucasus SOS that Volodin had come to Dagestan in late May at the invitation of men who had contacted him online and told him they had rented him an apartment there.

However, they turned out to be officers from the Centre for Combating Extremism, a special unit within the Russian police, who after beating Volodin and confiscating his phone, forced him to assist them with entrapping gay men online, according to North Caucasus SOS. Using Volodin’s account to invite people to the apartment, the officers allegedly filmed Volodin’s sexual encounters with more than five men.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

However, they turned out to be officers from the Centre for Combating Extremism, a special unit within the Russian police

I have to admit, I do wonder whether that group's job is just going after homosexuals or whether they deal with all the stuff that the Russian government flagged as "extremist", like terrorism and suchlike too.

EDIT: Apparently they have an English-language Wikipedia page. Looks like it's the latter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Combating_Extremism

The Centre for Combating Extremism (Russian: Главное управление по противодействию экстремизму МВД России, romanized: Glavnoye upravleniye po protivodeystviyu ekstremizmu MVD Rossii), also known as Centre E (Russian: Центр «Э» [tsɛntr ɛ]) is a unit within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

The unit was established by decree No. 1316 of the President of the Russian Federation on 16 September 2008.[1] The unit has been especially active in the North Caucasus and also in Crimea following its annexation in 2014.[2] Their official focus is the suppression of extremism. The Centre E has been widely accused of prosecuting and harassing opposition groups, anti-regime bloggers, environmentalists and other civic activists.[3][4] One example of their work is the suppression of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia.[5]

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