MOSCOW, November 7. /TASS/. The members of Russia’s presidential human rights council paid a visit to a penal colony in Karelia, in northwestern Russia, on Monday to meet with jailed activist Ildar Dadin after his claims of being tortured by the staff.

"We are in the colony, we are working. Dadin said the same thing he had said earlier. We will announce our conclusions later," the council’s member Igor Kalyapin, who heads the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, told TASS.

The media earlier publicized Dadin’s letter in which he claimed to have been tortured in the Segezh colony. Russian Human Rights Ombudsperson Tatiana Moskalkova earlier met with the activist in the colony. She said his complaints needed to be checked thoroughly.

Dadin is the first person in Russia sentenced for violation of Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code (repeated violations of the rules of public gatherings). In December 2015, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Dadin guilty on four counts of participating in unauthorized protests in Moscow.

Dadin was sentenced to three years in a penal colony but then the Moscow City Court reduced his jail term to two and a half years.