Underage girl from Dagestan is accusing her relative and the Khasavyurt law-enforcement officers of having forced her to falsely accuse several men of rape in 2019. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture started a public investigation.

On 16 October 2020, Leila (the applicant’s name is changed – the author’s note) from the Republic of Dagestan applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance together with her relatives. Leila told human rights defenders that in July 2019 her aunt seized her from her parents and was beating her at her place, demanding that she falsely accused several men, including her father, of rape. According to Leila, her aunt told her several times she was doing it in order to take custody of her and receive money.

In September 2019, Leila’s aunt applied to the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Kazbekovsky District with a crime report on repeated rape of her niece. In several days’ time, the local district officer showed Leila via video call four apprehended men who were in the Khasavyurt Interdistrict Investigative Department of Russia for the Republic of Dagestan.

“The district officer asked me if they raped me or not. My answer was negative. The district officer switched off the phone and told me to tell it was them who raped me, after that the video call was resumed. Then I said it was them. After that I saw in the phone two men starting to beat up the apprehended”, – Leila recalls.

After that she was put in Social-rehabilitation center for minors in Makhachkala. According to Leila, in several days’ time, Khasavyurt police officer Yusoup Magomedov, followed by two colleagues of his, came to her (at the present time, Yusoup Magomedov is a defendant in torture case of Musa Aliyev – applicant with the Committee Against Torture – the author’s note), and, the aunt ordered her to write this rape statement in the presence of these police officers.

“I refused to do it, and then the aunt beat me up in the presence of Yusoup Magomedov and the two officers that came with them. These three did not react to this and did not tell the aunt to stop beating me, – Leila described.

After that, according to Leila, she was taken to the Investigative Department of Khasavyurt, where she wrote a rape statement. In addition, she said that on the way back to the rehabilitation center, Yusoup Magomedov hit her with a phone charger cord and told her to say everything as her aunt demanded.

A few weeks later, the investigator with the Investigative Department of Khasavyurt came to the rehabilitation center and warned Leila that she would be interrogated. “He told me that if I did not say everything like my aunt told me, they would beat up my parents”, – Leila described.

According to the girl, subsequently the threats of the parents’ battery were repeated several times.

On 10 October 2020, Leila managed to flee from the rehabilitation center in Makhachkala. Several days later her parents and she applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance. Leila explained to human rights defenders that, among other things, her flight from the rehabilitation center was caused by brutal treatment and the battery by the tutors.
 
According to human rights defenders, criminal cases were opened against nine people with regard to whom Leila wrote statements: they are accused of having committed sex crimes.
“We initiated our own public investigation, in the framework of which we intend to gather maximum information about what happened to Leila, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Dmitry Piskounov comments. – Over the next few days we shall apply to the investigative authorities with a crime report on behalf of Leila”.