TheCommitteeagainstTortureisinvestigatingintothisbangingincidentintheBirskdetoxificationcentre.
At the beginning of March 2010 the Bashkirian representation of the Committee against Torture received an application from Ms. Aparina claiming that her son, Dmitry Aparin, born in 1987, had been battered by officers of the detoxification centre under the Birsk district Department of Internal Affairs.
The Bashkirian representation has opened a public investigation under Ms. Aparina’s application. The preliminary check shows that the detoxification centre staff has violated article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment) – infliction of injuries by the police.
According to Dmitry Aparin, 5th year student of the Art and Graphics School of the Birsk State Social and Pedagogical Academy, on February 10, 2010 he was detained by the police near AvtoMir shop (Birsk), it’s a ten-minute walk from his home. That evening Dmitry and his friends were going home from Uyut Café where they had been celebrating someone’s birthday. On the way home he was detained by the police and taken to the detoxification centre.
Dmitry’s mother thinks that the reason for Dmitry’s detention and shipment to the detoxification centre was his inherent stutter. Dmirty does not take any alcohol at all.
At the detoxification centre they took Dmitry’s clothes and personal belongings away and placed him in a cold ward without giving him any blanket or coverlet. He was not allowed to call home. Dmitry started knocking on the door insisting on a phonecall. Then two police officers entered the ward and threw him on the bed. Some time after Dmitry started knocking on the door again asking for a blanket because it was very cold. In response the police only laughed. Then, according to Dmitry, they came in and beat him up so that he lost consciousness.
Dmitry came to himself only in the morning when he was already located in the Birsk Central Hospital. It turned out that around 2 a.m. the police had taken unconscious Dmitry to hospital without giving him any medical aid. At around 2.30 a.m. Dmitry’s mother got a call from hospital and was asked to take the son home, but when she arrived there and saw his condition she refused to do so and insisted on an examination. The X-ray made in the morning showed that the second neck-bone was broke.
On 12 February 2010 Dmitry Aparin was shipped in an ambulance to Ufa, to the Republican Clinical Hospital named after G.G. Kuvatov. Basing on the results of computer tomography, Dmitry was diagnosed with a traumatic front subluxation and transverse travel of C2 neck-bone with a fracture of the back bone part and rupture of C1-C3 ligaments; contusion and myelomalacia of the spinal marrow. On 24 February 2010 Dmitry had a surgery, the damaged neck-bone was removed and replaced with a piece taken from of the femoral bone.
Dmitry Aparin’s parents complained about the crime committed in respect of their son to the Birsk Department of Internal Affairs, Birsk Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office, Bashkirian Ministry of the Interior, however the law enforcement authorities have not taken any decision yet
The Bashkirian representation of the Interregional Committee against Torture will press for an effective investigation and prosecution of those in charge.