Being considered a spy has cost the journalist of ‘The Wall Street Journal’ dearly Evan Gershkovic, detained in Russia. The authorities have imprisoned him in the Lefortovo prisona Stalin-era prison converted into a kind of Guantánamo for dissidents.

There, the silence is only broken by the guards, who even turn on the public address system to prevent prisoners from being able to communicate among them. And it is that everything in Lefortovo is designed so that the inmates neither see nor sense each other.

It is there that Moscow has isolated the American journalist, accused of espionage, in the prison where Russia locks up those who it considers its greatest danger, such as spies or political dissidents. Its authorities keep everything that happens inside a secret and even the number of prisoners held inside is unknown.

Created in the 19th century, It was used by Joseph Stalin in his purges and inherited by the KGB. It is now controlled by the FSB, the current Russian secret service. The men most feared by Vladimir Putin have passed through its corridors, including Intelligence officers Alexander Litvinenko and Sergey Skripal, accused of espionage, who ended up poisoned. Also the writer Eduard Limonovactivist and opponent of the Russian president.

Lefortovo prisoners pass all day locked in their cells and they can only walk for an hour a day in a tiny patio with a barred top, the only place from which they can see the sun once a day.