Yesterday a discussion/presentation of the book “Public investigation of torture and other violations of fundamental human rights” – a new guidance book on public investigation, developed by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, took place in the Sakharov Center.

(Photo: Dmitry Piskunov)

The publication introduces the reader to methods of public investigation of grave violations of human rights, developed by Interregional non-governmental organization “The Committee for Prevention of Torture”. The authors describe the main principles of the organization, key elements and individual procedures of this process, as well as provide practical advice on performing investigation. The book contains the analysis of Russian and international legal norms, description of special legal techniques as well as numerous documents of the Committee’s legal practice.   

This is the second, significantly reworked edition of the book and it is adapted to new legal realities, and also, due to its two-volume format, is more convenient for work with dissimilar materials. The most significant novelty of the second edition is the description of forty cases of public investigation with attached list of procedural documents. 

One of the book’s authors, Stanislav Dmitriyevsky: “We hope that this book will be useful not only to human rights defenders, but also to defense lawyers and other practicing lawyers. We think that this book should go beyond the narrow circle of human rights community, and I hope that it will become an important event, including in Russian legal literature.  At least, we would like to believe that”.