Aleksey Kondrashov with his family.

Today, on 11 June 2021, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted an application to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of Aleksey Kondrashov from the Orenburg region – according to him, in the August 2019, the police officers beat him up, broke his rib and inflicted a brain concussion. At the national level, the investigator dismissed claims to open a criminal case against the police officers eight times, threatening to open a case against Kondrashov himself, if he does not quite down.

As we have previously reported, on 4 September 2019, Aleksey Kondrashov from Maly Surmet settlement of the Orenburg region applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance. According to him, on 29 August 2019, he and his son Sergey were busy putting hay in the trailer of his tractor. At about 10 a.m., six people in civilian clothes drove to their house – three of them got over the fence, while three more, according to Aleksey, got inside the house.

The men introduced themselves as police officers and told the head of the family that they were looking for his second son Yury on suspicion of robbery. Kondrashov-the elder replied that he did not know anything about Yury’s whereabouts and started to express his indignance at the police officers’ abuse of power, who entered the house without the court ruling and without asking the house owners for permission. At Aleksey’s demand, the second group of the police officers left the house and came outside, after that the head of the family went to the tractor which he did not have the time to shut down due to the visit of law-enforcement.

“I was walking towards the tractor. I did not reach it at the moment when three police officers hurried after me like vultures from my back. They brought me on the ground face down, and started to hit and kick my body and head and attempted to twist my hands behind my back. They wanted to tie my hands up with a belt. They also hit my neck, shoulders… One of them hit me painfully with his knee at my back “, – Aleksey Kondrashov recalls.

According to Aleksey, physical force was also applied against his son Sergey.

At this time Aleksey’s wife Klavdiya returned home, who attempted to interfere and hamper the police officer’s tying her son up – according to her, she was pushed rudely aside several times and called names.

The police officers tied Aleksey and Sergey’s arms with belts, put both of them in the vehicle and took them to the police department.

From the police department they were taken to hospital where both were tested for alcohol intoxication (as the tests showed, both were sober). The relatives picked the Kondrashov father and son from the police department.

On the next day, Aleksey Kondrashov applied to hospital. He was diagnosed with numerous injuries: bruises and hematomas on his face and head, closed craniocerebral injury, brain concussion, broken tenth rib on the right near the scapulocostal line.

Later on, the medical forensic specialist indicated in his conclusion that Aleksey Kondrashov’s bodily injuries might have been developed under the circumstances on which he informed initially. The specialist indicated that the brain concussion, hypodermic hematoma of the left temporal region, paraorbital hematoma on the left, bruise on the forehead developed from no less than three impact traumatic forces, and the closed fracture of the tenth rib on the right developed from, at least, one impact traumatic force at the point of fracture.

On 30 August, Aleksey Kondrashov applied to the Prosecutor’s Office with a complaint against the police officers. It was forwarded to the Abdulinsky Interdistrict Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Orenburg region.

The police officers also applied to the Investigative Committee. They stated that they did not beat the Kondrashov father and son, but applied physical force against them legally because Segey threatened them with hay fork and Aleksey, at first, threatened them with a spanner, and later hit one of the law-enforcement officers with it.

Investigator Ilyas Salikov dealt with investigation of both versions of events. On 29 September, he refused to initiate criminal proceedings, considering the behavior of the police officers, as well as the Kondrashov father and son’s behavior, to be legal.

After Deputy Prosecutor of the Orenburg region Andrey Vyazikov quashed the seventh dismissal of the claim to open a criminal case, on 29 April 2021, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture applied to Deputy Head of the Regional Investigative Department with the Investigative Committee Andrey Zverev with a request to seize the materials from investigator Salikov’s proceedings and transfer them for investigation to the first department for major cases with the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Orenburg region. In justification of their position, human rights defenders pointed out that it was not the first time when the investigator was ignoring the position of the regional Prosecutor’s Office. Secondly, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture claimed that the investigator tolerated biased approach which expresses in direct threats to open a criminal case against Kondrashov with regard to his applying violence, allegedly, against the police officer, if he did not stop complaining and insisting on resuming the check.

At the same time, Deputy Head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Orenburg region Andrey Zverev ignored the arguments of human rights defenders concerning the investigator’s biased approach expressed in threats to initiate criminal proceedings against the applicant, and dismissed both the claim to transfer the material of the check to the first department for major cases and the claim to bring the investigator to disciplinary action.

“During the pre-investigative check, for two years the investigator failed to add the documents justifying the grounds for the Kondrashov’s apprehension, did not identify the mechanism of inflicting bodily injuries in the area of Aleksey’s head. Moreover, the expert examination assigned in the framework of the check for the presence of bodily injuries on Aleksey Kondrashov and the bodily harm it caused was carried out with violations, which is confirmed by the written confirmation of Roszdravnadzor (the Federal Service for the Supervision of Public Health and Social Development), – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Timur Rakhmatullin comments. – At the domestic level, we shall certainly continue to insist that the criminal case is opened, but, at the present time, the fact is to be acknowledged that the Russian Federation deprived Aleksey Kondrashov the effective remedies, due to that we have to apply to the European Court of Human Rights”.