Lawyers Olga Golub, Rosa Magomedova and lawyers from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture representing the interests of Temirlan Eskerkhanov, a person involved in the case of murder of Boris Nemtsov, submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. In this complaint the representatives of Temirlan ask to declare illegal the refusal to open a criminal case issued by the investigators with regard to the application of Eskerkhanov about being physically abused and treated violently by the representatives of the law-enforcement authorities.
(Photo: TASS, Stanislav Krasilnikov)
As we have previously reported, the persons involved in the case of Boris Nemtsov’s murder, Temirlan Eskerkhanov and Zaur Dadaev, applied to the Moscow department of the interregional NGO “The Committee for the Prevention of Torture” asking for legal advice. They complained that had suffered illegal pressure. In particular, Eskerkhanov informed the human rights activists that he was beaten when he was arrested. Later, according to his words, people in black uniform without any identification marks bullied him when he was transported from the temporary detention facility to the Basmanny Court of Moscow: he was photographed naked, his beard and face were put on fire, and when he was transported to the court building he was hit on the back of his head, loins and the area of the kidneys.
When human rights activists started their investigation, they immediately faced difficulties and actual reluctance of the official investigation proves to check Eskerkhanov’s complaint on his being violently treated by the representatives of the law-enforcement authorities.
Sergey Babinets, the lawyer of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture points out: “It took Aleksey Stadnikov, senior investigator for major cases in the Central Investigation Department of the RF Investigating Committee only one month to complete checking of the crime report and issue a refusal to open a criminal case. Those who ever worked with such cases just once know that it is impossible to do anything well and properly in such a short period of time. After studying the materials of this checking, our fears proved true. The investigator ignored Eskerkhanov’s words about his being bullied at the Basmanny District Court; Stadnikov did not determine and interrogate the security guard, did not call for expert medical examination of Eskerkhanov, did not examine the scene of action, did not take the recordings from the surveillance cameras located at the court and did not interrogate FSB officers who arrested Eskerkhanov. We appealed against this refusal several times adressing to Stadnikov’s superiors and then to the court. The Basmanny District Court and after that the Moscow City Court declared that the the investigator’s ruling was legal.
In spite of this fact we insist that this ruling is quashed and a new check is conducted. With this regard today we apply to the Supreme Court”.
As we have previously reported, in June this year human rights activists applied to the European Court of Human Rights with a complaint on the behalf of Eskerkhanov concerning the inefficiency of his crime report investigation.