On February 28, 2013 in the capital of the Chechen Republic a training for policemen in the scope of the project “Legal education of law enforcement officers” was held. A member of the consolidated mobile group of rights defenders, the head of the office of IRPO “Committee against torture” in the Mary El Republic Dmitry Yegoshin was invited as an expert in investigating torture complaints.

(The photo shows Dmitry Yegoshin)

This is what he told the press service of the Committee about the event.

«I received a call from the Human rights Centre of the Chechen Republic and was offered to take part in a training for policemen. They asked to tell about the responsibility of the officials, using tortures in their work, about the activity of the European Court of Justice, about what tortures are from the point of view of the international law and right about what human rights are.

Frankly speaking the call surprised me. After all we are not often invited to give lectures to Chechen policemen. All the more in the course of our work we collected enough evidence that the level of human rights violations by the law enforcement authorities is really high in Chechnya. That is why it makes us glad that the administration of the Republic MOI showed they are ready for a dialogue with human rights defenders and rising the law awareness level of their staff.

Unfortunately there was no heated debate during the training. To tell the truth I expected objections leading to typical for communication with policemen arguing, that the criminals and their henchmen may be tortured to get evidence. Though it wouldn’t happen the audience wasn’t bored. On the whole I consider the first try was quite lucky, besides the police administration expressed a wish to make such trainings regular. Certainly we agreed with pleasure”.

For inquiries:

Since November 2009 a consolidated mobile group of human rights defenders operates in the Chechen Republic. It had been formed in order to get reliable and checked information on human rights violation in the Chechen Republic. Also the group’s task is to elicit the reasons of ineffective investigating of tortures and abductions in Chechnya by the investigating authorities. The fact of the inadequate character of investigating is more and more often stated in the decrees of the European Court of Justice.

The lawyers of the consolidated mobile group carry out a public inquiry on citizens’ applications about tortures and abductions in Chechnya and also represent legal interests of these citizens, recognized as victims in criminal cases.