"They tied my hands to my ankles," she begins, demonstrating by bending forward, before she describes being hit around the head with a full plastic bottle. Strangulation was regular – "one guy holding your neck, another pinching your nose" – while they demanded unsuccessfully that she reveal her husband's location or inform on others with military connections in the town.
A wire flex was wrapped around her neck, a gun was placed against her forehead – "Imagine the condition I was in," she says, speaking quickly – and she says she was also given electric shocks.
Yahupova says the violence was the work of a team of five or six FSB officers – "One by one, they would do these things. They enjoyed this" – and recounts being in a state of shock and pain. "I wouldn't even have time to yell … there was no time to think … often, I was just looking. It was so shocking," she continues.
