Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture applied to the superiors of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the Chechen Republic with a request to conduct an internal check with regard to the investigator who, back in 2016, did not register the report on the crime committed against Ramazan Djalaldinov and members of his family, from Kenkhi settlement. As a result, the report was registered, in the end, and the check was initiated, but as late as in April 2019, after nearly three years since it was submitted.
Ramazan Djalaldinov from Kenkhi settlement of the Chechen Republic applied to the Committee Against Torture in April 2017. He told that he was subjected to prosecutions after he published video messages in the Internet addressed to President of Russia Vladimir Putin about grave situation in the settlement and abuse of power by the authorities.
Djalaldinov told human rights defenders that on 12 May 2016, after threats received from the police officers, his house in Kenkhi settlement was burned down by unknown masked persons. According to his wife, Nazirat, in the night from 12 to 13 May 2016 the police officers took her and her daughters to the territory of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Sharoysky District of the Republic, where physical and moral violence was applied against them aiming at forcing them to influence Ramazan so that he deleted his videos from the Internet. According to Nazirat, after that her and her daughters were taken during the night to the border of Chechnya and Dagestan and left in the road without money or warm clothes, and they were told they did not have a home anymore.
On 24 May 2016, Chairman of the Committee Against Torture Igor Kalyapin submitted a crime report to the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Chechen Republic which covered all the mentioned facts, including applying violence against Ramazan Djalaldinov’s wife and daughters and the arson of the home where they dwelt. Then, investigator Adlan Lepiyev refused to register this report appropriately. He referred to the fact that, allegedly, the claims on applying violence will be checked in the framework of some “other check”, at the same time, he never specified which one exactly.
This year, human rights defenders managed to obtain access to the materials of the check related to Ramazan Djalaldinov, who went missing. This check was initiated after the reports from the media saying that Ramazan Djalaldinov disappeared from his native village in November 2016 and, allegedly, no one knew about his wheareabouts. Later on, other materials on Djalaldinov’s reports to the Investigative Committee were included in the check. Lawyers, representing Djalaldinov, thought they would be able to find the materials of “that other check” among them, however, there were none. After that it became clear, that the investigators never performed any check on the arson of the house and applying violence against Djalaldinov’s family, and human rights defenders applied to the court with a complaint against the response from investigator Lepiyev dated 2016, which, in essence, became the refusal to conduct the check as such.
“At the second meeting on our application, the Investigative Committee’s representative brought a report on revealing the elements of crime in Igor Kalyapin’s three-years old application. At the same time, the report shamefacedly conceals the date of the report. It is provided by the criminal and procedural code that the ruling on the crime report is issued three days after the latter it is received. And in this case, the Investigative Committee got it a bit wrong and mixed up three days and three years. But the fact, that such report was still drawn up, means actual acknowledgement of the illegality of Lepiyev’s ruling. That is why we applied today to the Investigative Department with the request to conduct an internal check”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Dmitry Piskunov, representing the interests of Ramazan Djalaldinov, comments.
After the report was attached, the judge, in whose proceedings the human rights defenders’ complaint was, refused to continue the hearing, in order to declare the ruling of investigator Lepiyev illegal on his own. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture are planning to submit an appellate appeal against the judge ruling on dismissal of the proceedings on the complaint.