Lawyers of Moscow representation of the interregional nongovernmental organization «Committee Against Torture» commenced public investigation into death of Farrukh Urozov from Tajikistan, which happened on 18 September 2014 in the near-Moscow town of Solnechnogorsk police department. Facts gathered by human rights defenders and witnesses testimonies allow to state with great probability that the man was brutally beaten to death.
(In the middle – Farukh Urozov, photo made by Makhmudchon Rakhmatov)
On 26 September 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 Svetlana.
According to Ilkhom, the police officers «woke up» his brother beating him several times with a truncheon and using electric shocker. The law-enforcement agents handcuffed Urozov 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 Svetlana.
Ilkhom explained that after a while police officers came up to his house again and this time they took him together with his mate Firdaus Sattatov 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.
«My brother managed to whisper to me in Tajik language: «I can’t stand it any longer». After that the police officers shut the door. Most of all I was astounded by the fact that all this time while we were standing in the corridor and listening to these terrible shouts the police officers who was passing by, did not pay any attention to the cries, as if that was quite normal», – Ilkhom Alikhonov recalls shuddering.
Early in the morning of 18 September Ilkhom and Firadus were released from the police department. Several hours later they learned that Farrukh Urozov died in the police department.
Lawyers of the Committee Against Torture managed to visually examine Farrukh’s injuries before his body was sent back home to Tajikistan. According to the preliminary death certificate the cause of death was murder, more precisely – assault with the use of a blunt instrument, resulted in «multitrauma of several body regions».
Head of Moscow representation of interregional NGO «Committee Against Torture» Sergey Babinets: «According to Ilkhom Alikhonov, a brother of the deceased, Farrukh had not had any traumas or injuries before he was detained by police officers. When the body was examined in the morgue we found a lot of bruises, scratches and hematomas all over his body. On 18 September 2014 the Solnechnogorsk Investigating Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Moscow region instituted criminal proceedings on the grounds of evidence of a crime under Article 286 (3) (a) of the Criminal Code of Russia (exceeding official powers with the use of violence or a the threat of violence). As far as we know pre-trial restriction in the form of placement in detention of one of the police officers was chosen by the court. In our turn, we also are conducting our own public investigation of circumstances surrounding the death of Farrukh. In case if we establish that he died through unlawful actions of the police officers we are going to apply best efforts so that the persons who are guilty of his death are brought to trial».