Yesterday, 16 August 2017, the Nizhegorodsky District Court awarded thirty thousand rubles to Denis Kramchaninov as a compensation for moral damage, incurred to him by the actions of the officers of the Shakhunsky Interdistrict Investigative Department. The court concluded that the pre-investigative check based on Kramchaninov’s torture complaint, was inefficient, which violated his rights. It is worth noting that seven years after the incident the case was opened and now is waiting to be reviewed in court. 

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(Photo: Denis Kramchaninov)

As we have previously reported, Denis Kramchaninov applied to the Committee Against Torture in July 2010. He told the human rights defenders that he was severely beaten by a local police officer who was forcing the young man to sign a false self-accusation of committing a theft.

As Kramchaninov reported in his explanation, in the evening of 15 July 2010 he was brought from his home to the police department of Shakhunya town. Inside the office premises the police officer demanded that the guy confessed of theft, after that he hit him several times with his fists against the head, pressed his fingers with pliers, and, having put the gas mask on the young man, made him do knee bends. The battery and torture lasted about two hours, after that Denis yielded and agreed to sign a full confession, which was dictated to him by the police officer. When in the evening of the same day the young man applied to the Shakhunskaya District hospital doctors diagnosed him with a cerebral concussion and registered some hematomas on his body.

The criminal case on theft initiated against Denis was dismissed in a short time due to failure to prove the young man’s guilt.
 
For almost seven years human rights defenders were insisting on opening the criminal case based on Denis torture report: during this time ten refusals to initiate criminal proceedings were issued, subsequently they were declared illegal and quashed. In August of last year lawyers with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture applied to the European Court of Human Rights in the interests of Denis Kramchaninov.

On 29 May of this year the criminal case was in the end opened. At the present time, it is sent to court for review on the merits.
 
In November of last year, the lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture applied to court on behalf of Kramchaninov with a lawsuit on compensation of the moral damage, incurred to him by inefficient work of the investigators.  

Yesterday the Nizhny Novgorod District Court partially satisfied the claims under the lawsuit, having awarded thirty thousand rubles to Kramchaninov as a compensation out of the claimed three hundred. 

“Despite the fact that the court satisfied our complaint we are not satisfied with the amount of the compensation awarded to Denis and we intend to appeal against the court ruling in this part”, – lawyer with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Danil Chendemirov, representing the interests of Kramchaninov, comments.