The court will examine a criminal case against Deputy Head of Police of the Primorsko-Akhtarsky District of the Krasnodar Territory Evgeny Volkov. According to the investigative authorities, in March 2021 he was involved in apprehension and battery of Andrey Popov. His penalty may involve up to ten years of jail time.  

Аndrey Popov, Nikolay Bondarenko and Sergey Duz applied to the Committee Against Torture in March 2021. They told human rights defenders that the police officers apprehend and beat them up in Kalininskaya village of the Krasnodar Territory, after that the two men were taken to the police department where the SOBR special police and Rosgvardiya officers continued their battery. All three reported that the law-enforcement officers demanded that they confessed of the theft of cows and boilers.    

– I was hit about twenty times. I agreed to write a full confession, – Andrey said.

Medics diagnosed the man with contusion of soft tissues and kidneys. Subsequently, a criminal case against Popov and Duz was opened under article “Theft with illegal invasion into premises or any other storage”. At the present time, both of them are at the Pre-Trial Detention Facility.  

In the course of the public investigation, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture received a video record which shows the law-enforcement officers brutally beating up the applicants – the latter, in their turn, do not offer any resistance. 

The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against police officer Evgeny Volkov – he was identified on the video record. According to the investigative authorities, he and a group of unidentified persons exceeded their official duties during Popov’s apprehension – it was him who was declared a victim. Duz and Bondarenko are involved in the case only in the capacity of witnesses.  

– The investigation chose the path of least resistance – prosecuting the only police officer who was featured in the video, despite the fact that the crime was committed by several law-enforcement officers. Some of them were shooting blanks above the heads of our applicants. We intend to insist that every one of them is brought to responsibility, – lawyer with the Krasnodar branch of the CAT Ilya Platonov comments.