It's no secret that Russia's law enforcement agencies are riddled with a culture of violence and corruption. But this sickening video showing the aftermath of a prison riot in 2006 is a stark reminder that Russia's prisons remain a state within a state--a place where officers are free to beat and torture their charges with impunity. The bitterest irony is that the human rights campaigner who obtained this footage, Lev Ponomarev, is on trial for allegedly slandering General Yuri Kalinin, the head of Russia's prison service, by saying that he ran "an institution where torture is regularly practiced." Ponomarev has had his passport confiscated pending his trial, and if convicted he faces a prison term of up to three years. But watching the horrific beatings inflicted on prisoners shown in this video, there's little doubt that Ponomarev is right. Yet it's the whistle-blower who is on trial, not the masked sadists depicted in the video.