Today, on 6 February 2019, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted to the European Court of Human Rights another application on behalf of Ilkhom Alikhonov, whose brother was beaten up to death at the police department of the Solnechnogorsky District in 2014. According to human rights defenders, not all officials were brought to responsibility for this crime, which is why Ilkhom’s victim status remains. Previously, a complaint was submitted to Strasbourg with regard to meager amount of compensation for moral damage inflicted by the death of the convict.
As we have previously reported, on 26 September 2014, 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. On 15 June 2016 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.
Back at the stage of the preliminary investigation, two materials of the check were severed from the materials of the criminal case: with regard to head of the Criminal Investigations Vitaliy Myasoyedov, who participated in the interrogation of Farrukh Urozov, and with regard to Patrol-Guard Service officers Kirill Grekov, Denis Shmakov and Ilya Tribunalov, who apprehended Urozov.
Investigators of the Investigative Committee three times refused to initiate criminal proceedings with regard to the mentioned above police officers, considering that their actions did not involve any element of crime and they acted legally. The courts upheld this stance of the investigative body at the national level.
“We think that when issuing “refusals” the investigators did nost take into account a lot of evidence, – comments lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Petr Khromov. – This involves the witnesses’ evidence and conclusions of the specialists who, in our opinion, in their totality, directly indicate that Myasoyedov, at least, was aware of his subordinates’ actions and was controlling them. These conclusions are supported by his call details. There is also evidence from witnesses of Urozov’s apprehension, who saw how impact munition was applied against him, which was absolutely unnecessary, because at the moment of apprehension he was sleeping and did not offer any resistance. However, despite all this, we failed to see any criminal cases initiated with regards to this. Due to this, today, we were forced to apply to the European Court of Human Rights”.
As we have previously reported , previously, on 7 August 2018,human rights defenders submitted an application to Strasbourg on behalf of Ilkhom Alikhonov, who was awarded meager compensation by domestic courts for moral damage inflicted to him by the death of his brother in the amount of two hundred rubles.