Speaking at a press conference today at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta’s office, Maxim Lapunov described how he was detained for being gay and held in Chechen police custody and beaten for 12 days in March 2017.

Chechen police reportedly forced Lapunov to reveal the names of other gay men living in Chechnya, and he says he was forced under threat of death to place his fingerprints on a firearm. “Every evening, they brought in a new ‘accused’ man into the prison,” he said, adding that he was forced to confess in a video recording that he is gay.

After going free, he fled to Yessentuki, in Russia’s Stavropol Krai, where police delayed and then dropped the case, after his wounds healed. Read more Meduza