Judge of the Babushkinsky District Court of Moscow Natalya Kurysheva declared illegal the dismissal of criminal prosecution of former head of Criminal Investigation with the Department of Interior for the Solnechnogorsky District of the Moscow region Vitaly Myasoyedov, who might have been involved in the beating to death of Farrukh Urozov at the police department in September 2014. The court obliged the Investigative Committee to resume the investigation of this case.

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.

On 11 August 2015, investigator of the Third Investigative Department of the Second Department on Major Cases with the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Moscow region Rybachenko issued a ruling on dismissal of the criminal prosecution of Myasoyedov, having indicated that “during the investigation of the criminal case the investigative authorities concluded that V.I.Myasoyedov was not involved in the committal of the crime”.

“During the issuance of this ruling, investigator Rybachenko did not evaluate and completely ignored collected evidence which directly points at Myasoyedov’s involvement in Urozov’s battery”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Petr Khromov comments.

Human rights defenders appealed against this ruling of the investigator, but the court twice dismissed their application. Subsequently, the Moscow City Court quashed these rulings on appeal and submitted the material for new examinations.

As a result, on 20 October 2020, lawyer with the Babushkinsky District Court of Moscow Natalya Kurysheva declared illegal the dismissal of the criminal prosecution of Vitaly Myasoyedov and obliged the Investigative Committee to resume the investigation.

“In her ruling the judge pointed out that the ruling of investigator Rybachenko is ungrounded, and the investigator’s conclusions on non-involvement of Myasoyedov in the committal of the crime are not confirmed by anything, since no evidence is featured in the ruling, – Petr Khromov comments. – In our turn, we are convinced in Myasoyedov’s involvement in the committed crime. According to the witnesses’ testimony, Myasoyedov repeatedly entered the room where Urozov was, and came back short of breath. As a result of the expert examination, the clothes of deceased Urozov featured the micro particles identical to the material that Myasoyedov’s shoes are made of. How the micro particles happened to be on the clothes was never explained by the investigation. We hope that now these answers will be obtained”.