Radik Dautov from Belebey applied to the Committee for the Prevention of Torture asking to conduct a public investigation. The applicant told human rights defenders that on 8 July he was brutally beaten up by the police officers in the building of the Department of the Interior for the Belebeyevsky District and Belebey town. As a result of the battery he was diagnosed with a fracture of nose and jaw, as well as a craniocerebral trauma. A criminal case was initiated on exceeding the official authority.
Radik informed human rights defenders that on the evening of 7 July of this year he was having rest with his friends at “Lavrushka” café. After that about 1 a.m. Radik went on foot in the direction of his home. The Patrol and Guard Service officers stopped him on the way and informed him that he was in the state of drunkenness and should go with them to the police department.
Upon arrival at the police department Radik became indignant at the fact of his taking to the department and refused to get out of the service car, due to that the Patrol and Guard Service officers and other officers, who were in civilian clothes, forced him to the building of the Department of the Interior of the Belebeyevsky District and Belebey town.
In the police premises Radik was in one of the offices together with the Patrol and Guard officer who delivered him to the police department and was drawing up some documents. Radik claimed that his bringing to the police department was illegal and refused to sign anything.
— After some time four more men in the civilian clothes entered the office, and one of them, looking at me, said “Here he is!” – Radik remembers. – I looked at them and realized these were the same people who were helping the officers who were bringing me to the police department.
As Radik explained, officers in civilian clothes handcuffed him and forced him into the corridor where they started to beat him up brutally.
— After these four brought me out to the corridor, one of them attempted to put me down by pulling the handcuffs from the back. The second officer hit me about a dozen times at the groin area, – Radik recalls. – Then they succeeded to bring me down and I fell on my knees, after that all four officers started to hit and kick me against the body and the hands. About five times my nose was hit and the jaw area from both sides.
According to Radik, the battery ceased after about half an hour, after that the officers brought the victim inside the room where the same Partol and Guard Service officer demanded that Radik breathed in a special tube in order to determine the alcohol content in his blood. However, Radik refused to do it and asked to take him to hospital to undergo medical examination.
As Radik explained, he spent the whole night at the police department and only at 7 a.m. managed to contact an acquaintance of his, a police officer, who arrived at the department right away and took Radik away.
On the same day, 8 July, Radik applied first to the hospital of Belebey town, and then submitted a crime report to the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Bashkortostan.
At the city hospital Radik was provided with medical assistance, he also underwent treatment there from 8 to 17 of July and was discharged from the hospital with the following diagnosis: «Combined injury. Closed craniocerebral injury. Brain contusion. Fracture of the right jaw on the right. Major subdermal hematoma of the groin area. Bruises at both wrists. Numerous bruises of the face, body, limbs».
On 7 August of this year the Chairman of the Belebeyevsky Interdistrict Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Bashkortostan passed a ruling on initiating criminal proceedings with relation to crime under item “a” of part 3 Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“exceeding official authority with the use of violence”). Nine days after Radik Dautov was declared a victim.
This week human rights defenders received a copy of the ruling. Now the investigation is ongoing, lawyers with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture participate in the criminal case as the victim’s representatives.
«It is not the first case in our practice when a person without bodily injuries is stopped in the street by the police officers, taken to the police department for drawing up the administrative protocol, however, subsequently the man leaves the department with serious injuries, – lawyer with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Evgeny Litvinov comments. – At the present time, we continue to conduct the public investigation, and we prepared a number of motions on the necessity of appropriate investigative activities».