Yesterday, 18 May 2017, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow partially satisfied the lawsuit on compensation of moral damage to Ilkhom Alikhonov, brother of Farrukh Urozov, who was beaten up to death by the police officers at the police department of the Solnechnogorsky District in 2014. The court evaluated the moral damage inflicted to Ilkhom by the crime of the police officers at the amount of two hundred thousand roubles (three million three hundred thousand were claimed). Lawyers with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, representing the interests of the brother of the deceased, intend to appeal against this ruling in the part of the awarded compensation, since they think that it does not correspond to the standards of international law and the principle of justice.
(Ilkhom Alikhonov, brother of the deceased, and lawyer with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Dmitry Piskounov)
As we have previously reported, on 26 September a Moscow-area resident Ilkhom Alikhonov applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal support. He told the human rights defenders that in the evening of 17 September when he returned home his brother Farrukh Urozov was asleep. In ten minutes time several Patrol-and-Guard Service officers entered the house together with the brothers’ neighbor.
According to Ilkhom, having applied physical violence, the police officers woke up his brother, handcuffed him and took him to the police department. As Ilkhom learned later, Farrukh was detained upon suspicion of using violence against six-year-old daughter of their neighbor.
Ilkhom explained that after a while police officers came up to his house again and this time they took him together with his mate Firdavs Sattorov to the same police department. There Alikhonov heard the loud cries of his brother, who was in one of the rooms. For some time he even managed to see Farrukh through a cracked door: the brother was sitting on the floor with hands tied, a lot of bruises and scratches were clearly seen on his face, there was blood on the floor.
Early in the morning of 18 September Ilkhom and Firdavs were released from the police department. Several hours later they learned that Farrukh Urozov died.
According to the forensic medical examination Urozov’s body and limbs were hit over seventy five times. In the course of the battery twelve ribs were broken. Mr Urozov died of multiple traumas and strangulation.
Criminal case with regard to the fact of Urozov’s death was immediately initiated; one of the police officers was detained and arrested. In the course of investigation the involvement of two other Criminal Investigations Department officers in Urozov’s death was established: later on they were also arrested and put into the pre-trial detention facility.
On 19 January 2016 the Solnechnogorskiy City Court of the Moscow region started examination of the criminal case on its merits. Over thirty witnesses were interrogated, ten volumes of the criminal case and numerous expert examinations were studied in the course of the five-month court proceedings.
On 15 June this year the judge of the Solnechnogorskiy City Court of the Moscow region Stanislav Chepik brought in the verdict of guilty for three defendants. They were declared guilty of committing the crimes under part 4 Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Russia («inflicting grave bodily harm leading to the death by negligence») and items «а, b, c» of part 3 Article 286 of the Criminal Code of Russia («abuse of office using violence, weapons or special equipment, which inflicted grave consequences»). Deikun and Chernyshev are sentenced to seven years and four months of prison term, Gordeyev – to seven years and six months of prison term. The court made a ruling that they would serve their sentence in a maximum security penal colony.
The convicted persons did not agree with the verdict and appealed against it in the Moscow regional court. On 27 October 2016, the court upheld the verdict of the court of first instance and the appeals of the convicted persons were not satisfied. The verdict came into legal force.
In January 2017 lawyers with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture submitted a lawsuit to the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow for compensation of moral damage to the brother of the deceased, inflicted by the police officers’ crime. Yesterday judge Nelly Rubtsova partially satisfied the claims under the lawsuit, having decided to collect two hundred thousand roubles from the Ministry of the Interior of Russia for the benefit of Ilkhom Alikhonov.
Lawyer with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Dmitry Piskounov, who represented Ilkhom Alikhonov’s interests in court, is not satisfied with such a ruling: “Our claims under the lawsuit in the amount of three million roubles correspond to compensations for similar cases assigned by the European Court of Human Rights. However, judge Rubtsova deemed that two hundred roubles will be a sufficient compensation for moral damage that Ilkhom suffered as a result of his brother’s death after the battery at the police department. We will certainly appeal against this court ruling in the part of the amount of the awarded compensation”.