Lawyers of Interregional nongovernmental organization «Committee Against Torture» lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of Aleksandr Bogdanov from Orenburg. Now the Strasbourg judges will have to establish whether the man was subjected to torture by the police and whether the investigation based on his application was efficient enough..
According to Aleksandr Bogdanov, in October 2011 he was subjected to severe battery and unbearable torture by the police in Orenburg police department № 3. As the victim recalls, the tortures involved choking using plastic bags, beating with a clasped palm and wiping with a boot’s heel, hanging the victim between the tables on a baseball bat in the «suitcase» pose, threatening with sexual violence. Tortures ended after 39 hours when Bogdanov agreed to confess of his acquaintance’s murder.
On the next day Aleksandr was examined by a forensic medical examiner who registered the hematomas of soft tissues, bruises, abrasions and hemorrhages. On the following day in the course of the bail hearing of the Dzerzhinskiy District Court Bodganov resiled from his confessions obtained under torture.
On 27 October 2011 the crime report was lodged with the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of RF for Orenburg region based on the fact of battery by the police. A little bit later Bogdanov’s brother Denis, and later on Aleksandr himself (already from the place of detention, as in November 2012 he was found guilty of murder and convicted to 9.5 years of imprisonment) applied to the Committee Against Torture with request to conduct a public investigation and render legal support in the case of Aleksandr’s torture by the police.
In the course of the pre-trial investigation the officers of the investigative department issued six refusals to initiate criminal proceedings, which were subsequently quashed either in the exercise of supervisory powers, or as a result of complaints and applications, lodged by the lawyers of the Committee Against Torture.
On 10 July this year the Orenburg Regional Court put a period to the investigation of the events happened to Bogdanov in the police department at the national level, when it refused to review on the merits the complaint against another refusal of the investigators to open a criminal case.
Having exhausted all domestic remedies available for protection of Aleksandr Bogdanov, lawyers working with the Committee Against Torture lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights on his behalf.
«One of the most cynical aspects in the Bogdanov’s case is that the Investigative Committee, having actually refused to investigate the facts, described by Aleksandr, handed over the materials for pre-trial investigation of the circumstances of how Bogdanov got his injuries to the same police department were, according to Aleksandr, he was tortured», – tells the head of the Orenburg office of the INGO «Committee Against Torture» Timur Rakhmatulin. «I think that the European Court of Human Rights will point out this fact and provide the appropriate evaluation of the overall efficiency of the investigation, conducted by our state».