In Dagestan, the investigation of the criminal case with regard to two police officers from Khasavyurt, accused of applying tortures to force a local citizen to confess of a rape of an underage neighbor girl, is completed. The indictment is affirmed at the Prosecutor’s Office, the criminal case is submitted to court for examination on its merits.

As we have previously reported, a citizen of Mutsalaul settlement of the Republic of Dagestan Musa Aliyev applied for legal assistance to the Committee Against Torture on 25 October 2019. He told human rights defenders that on 6 September the police officers took him to the building of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District, allegedly, for providing evidence as a witness with regard to the murder committed in the settlement a few months ago in a neighboring settlement. Aliyev remembers that he was taken to the room on the second floor and there two police officers started to beat him up: Deputy of the Head of Criminal Investigations of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District Ramazan Suleymanov and criminal investigations officer Yusoup Magomedov.

According to Aliyev, these police officers hit his feet, back and face, as well as made him stand near the wall with spread legs (put him on “spreader”) for over an hour in order to force confession of the rape of an underage neighbor girl.

Aliyev refused to provide false confessions and in the evening of the same day he was released home without drawing up any procedural documents or registration in the manual. Musa applied to the Khasavyurt City Hospital for medical assistance. Later on, the expert diagnosed Aliyev with brain concussion and contusion of soft tissues of the parietofrontal area, which inflicted a mild damage to health and were caused by the impact of a solid blunt object.

On 10 October, based on Musa Aliyev’s applying to the medical institution, the Khasavyurt Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Republic of Dagestan initiated a criminal case under Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“abuse of office using violence”) with regard to police officers Suleymanov and Magomedov, and Aliyev was declared a victim.

At the present time the accused police officers are under custody at the Pre-Trial Detention Facility.

On 27 July 2020, Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic of Dagestan affirmed the indictment of police officers Suleymanov and Magomedov. The criminal case is submitted to court for examination on its merits.

“An important part of work is completed and we are satisfied with its results, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Abubakar Yangulayev, representing the interests of victim Musa Aliyev, comments. – At the stage of the preliminary investigation, a sufficient amount of evidence was collected which points at the police officers’ guilt in the crime which they are charged with. In the course of the court proceedings we shall continue to represent Aliyev’s interests”.