A criminal case is opened in Krasnodar Territory regarding the fact of Evgeny Bounin’s tortures at the Tuapse Police Department in November last year. According to Bounin, the investigative officer forced him to confess of a theft of a mobile phone. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture are acknowledged as the victim’s representatives and will be rendering legal assistance to him in the framework of the criminal case.
As we have previously reported, on 19 November 2018, Evgeny Bounin from Indyuk settlement of the Tuapse region applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance. He told that on 12 November he was summoned for a conversation at the police department, located on Mira Street in Tuapse: there, in one of the offices of the criminal investigations department, one of the officers handcuffed him and demanded that he wrote a full confession of a phone theft.
“I said I was not involved in this. After that the police officer started to hit me on the head with first and palms of his hands. The pulled the hood of my coat on my head and after several blows my nose started to bleed and there appeared a pool of blood on the floor”, – Bounin recalls.
According to Evgeniy, the police officer, who strongly smelled of alcohol, threatened him that the battery would last for the whole night and as a result he would still be apprehended as a suspect.
“Having concerns for my health, I wrote the required confession at the dictation of another criminal investigations officer”, – Bounin continues.
According to Evgeniy, at the police department he was offered some vodka, after that the police officers brought him home in their vehicle, and on the road he continued to drink vodka with the police officer who had beaten him up.
In the morning of the next day, Bounin called an ambulance team to his house, and was put to Tuapse District Hospital No.1. There Evgeniy was diagnosed with: “Closed craniocerebral injury, brain concussion, extravasation of soft tissues of the right periorbital area, contusion of soft tissues of the occipital region”.
On the same day, 13 November, Evgeniy’s sister applied to the Investigative Committee with a crime report. According to Bounin, a forensic scientist came to his hospital immediately; he photographed and registered his bodily injuries.
Senior investigator of the Investigative Department for Tuapse city of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Krasnodar Territory Philipp Shevrikuko was assigned to perform checking of this crime report.
“Instead of timely check of circumstances described in the complaint, questioning Bounin, witnesses, performing prompt search and record of data crucial for establishing the truth, investigator Shevrikuko twice tried to hand this complaint over to investigators on major cases investigation of the territorial investigative department, but each time he received a refusal with a wording that the “mentioned events are not specifically complicated and do not attract much public interest”, as well as committed on the territory of one region”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Sergey Romanov comments. – After that, Mr Shevrikuko himself had to perform the check of complaint about tortures at the police department”.
On 10 April 2019, the investigator issued a ruling refusing to initiate criminal proceedings. In this ruling, Mr Shevrikuko openly admitted that “the performed check failed to fully prove or disprove the circumstances of how E.A.Bounin wrote his confession”, with regard to which the investigator ordered to conduct a number of expert examinations, the results of these are not yet ready.
However, a few days later, on 16 April 2019, investigator Shevrikuko initiated criminal proceedings under items “a”, “b” of Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“abuse of office using violence and special equipment”).
Today, human rights defenders received a copy of this ruling, and Evgeny Bounin was declared a victim, and lawyers with the Committee Against Torture were acknowledged as his representatives.
“We are satisfied with the fact that the criminal case was opened, but we continue to insist that it could and should have been done earlier – and investigator Shevrikuko had all the grounds to do so, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Roman Veretennikov comments. – Now we will be insisting that this case should have a suspect in it, the one that victim identified straight away and who is known to the investigator for a long time”.