MOSCOW, January 31 (RAPSI, Maria Petrova) - Yevgeny Semenyako, President of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers, has addressed the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor General's Office regarding the violation of lawyers' rights in a number of detention facilities in the Yaroslavl and Irkutsk regions and Udmurtia, according to a statement on the chamber's website.

The statement claims that in July 2013 at a detention facility in Yaroslavl, a lawyer was detained after a meeting with his client and put behind bars for refusal to delete an audio recording of the client meeting.

At another detention facility, in the Irkutsk Region, a computer-aided identification system was installed to monitor visits. Each visitor had to provide fingerprints and be photographed. In violation of the law, the procedure was applied to lawyers, which prevented them from promptly performing their duties. Those lawyers who refused to provide fingerprints were then offered two offices with cells – a requirement only for criminals charged with serious crimes.

Yet another case mentioned by the Federal Chamber of Lawyers took place in an Udmurtian pre-trial facility in November 2013. Senior officials of the center ordered a thorough search of all individuals working with defendants. The searches of lawyers and investigators involved undressing, which was seen as a humiliation.

The president of the chamber thus addressed Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov with a request to conduct inspections at the aforementioned facilities and impose sanctions on those responsible in order to prevent similar breaches in the future.

One more request from Semenyako, addressed by Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, was to ensure that the law on the independence of lawyers was observed in the suspect detention facilities.