The Prosecutor’s Office of the Promyshlenny District of Orenburg quashed the seventh ruling on dismissing the criminal case with regard to torture of Vladimir Prytkov at the police department in 2010. Investigator Dmitry Gryazev, investigating this case, is pointed at the necessity of completion of a number of essential actions and rectifying the violations which were revealed previously by the Orenburg Regional Court.
(Vladimir Prytkov)
As we have previously reported, on 19 July 2010 Vladimir Prytkov from Orenburg applied to the regional branch of the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance – the man claimed that he was severely beaten up by the policemen from 2nd Operational Investigation Unit of the Orenburg Regional Directorate of the Interior.
As Vladimir told the human right defenders, on 19 May 2010 he was detained at work and delivered to the 2nd Operational Investigation Unit of the Orenburg Regional Directorate of the Interior. There, according to Prytkov, he was beaten and tortured for about four hours with the purpose of making him confess that he together with his brother was involved in car theft, or to pay a bribe so that he would be only a witness in this case, unlike his brother. Having failed to obtain a confession from Vladimir, the police had to release him.
After such «conversation» with the representatives of the authorities Vladimir went straight to the city hospital No.1, and after his condition grew worse he was urgently hospitalized in the city clinical hospital named after N.I.Pirogov. The following diagnosis was established: «combined craniocerebral injury, brain contusion of medium severity, subarachnoid hemorrhage, contusions of soft tissues of the head, chest contusion, arterial hypertension of 1 and 2 degree. Asthenoneurotic syndrome».
After he was released from the Pirogov hospital as an in-patient Vladimir was undergoing out-patient treatment in its outpatient clinic for three months.
On 28 June 2010 Prytkov submitted a crime report upon the fact of police abuse to investigative authorities, however for over a year the investigators failed to open a criminal case. Only on 16 November 2011 it was opened 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).
Despite numerous motions for conducting investigating actions and complaints against inaction of the investigative authorities, submitted by the human rights defenders on behalf of Prytkov, the case was repeatedly dismissed on the grounds that no crime had been committed.
During several years lawyers with the Committee Against Torture insisted on conducting face-to-face confrontations with the police officers whom Mr Prytkov accuses of torture. In December 2017 investigator Dmitry Gryazev at last satisfied human rights defenders’ motion and performed face-to-face confrontations between the victim and the operational personnel.
In the course of this investigative activity the police officers provided contradictory and inconsistent evidence. They failed to explain how the blood came about in their office, the blood which, according to expert examination, may belong to Mr Prytkov. This blood falls into rare fourth category with negative Rh factor, same as Prytkov’s blood.
The police officers also failed to explain why they took Vladimir Prytkov to the police department and which legal grounds they had for that, as well as why the young man who used to be in perfect health when he was delivered to the police department, developed numerous bodily injuries after communication with them.
However, investigator was satisfied with explanations of the police officers and in January of this year passed another dismissal of the criminal case.
Today, the lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of Vladimir Prytkov, received a notification from the Prosecutor’s Office of the Promyshlenny District of Orenburg informing that on 4 May 2018 this ruling of the investigator was quashed and the case is sent back for additional investigation.
“For seven years the investigators of the Investigative Committee have been unable to pass a legal ruling in this case, constantly suspending it. We think that it may be related to the fact that the investigators lost the key evidence – samples of blood which were taken at the room, – comments lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Timur Rakhmatulin. – With regard to this we already applied to Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia Aleksandr Bastrykin with a request to bring to responsibility the executives who are guilty of the red tape”.
It is worth noting that on 7 November 2014, as a result of investigative bodies’ obvious lack of desire to investigate a criminal case based on the fact of Vladimir Prytkov’s police torture, human rights defenders were forced to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.