Lawyer of the Committee Against Torture Timur Rakhmatulin:
«Today I have received an appellate resolution of the Orenburg Regional Court dated 25 May 2016 which declared legal taking into custody Deputy Head of Penal Colony-Settlement No.11 for Security and Field Work Murat Kumarov. As we have previously reported, a criminal case was opened against Kumarov in April. He is accused of forcing some convicts to rape the other convict, supervising this act of violence and recording it with a video recorder in order to demonstrate the video tape to other convicts with «educational» purposes.
The resolution contained several curious aspects: it turns out that many of acting penitentiary officers are afraid of Kumarov – his former colleagues, who are now witnesses in the criminal case. For example, many of them indicated that they fear for their lives and health because of the testimony that they provided.
By the way, it is the same colony, the former head of which has already got jail time for using «slave labour» of convicts in his personal interests. This colony is also notorious because of the incident when one of its officers assaulted the Investigative Committee’s investigator, when the latter was performing investigative activities. Subsequently this officer was also convicted.
In general, this is the «showcase» of a correctional institution. And for those who are interested, I will quote a word-for-word extract from the Orenburg Regional Court resolution (I decided not to quote the whole resolution so as not to “flash” certain names and not to make the readers tired of so many letters):
«M.A.Kumarov is charged with committing two grave crimes in the period of his service in the Federal Government Institution “Penal Colony-Settlement No.11 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Orenburg region”. One of them is against sexual integrity and sexual freedom, the other one – against the state authority and the interests of the state service. The punishment for these crimes involves only lengthy terms of imprisonment.
The material features evidence that M.A.Kumarov has legal knowledge and some experience as an operative authorized officer of the Federal Penitentiary Service, plus some weapon skills, too. As it follows from the witnesses’ interrogations transcriptions – eyewitnesses and M.A.Kumarov colleagues – all of them have concerns with regard to their life and health because of their testimony in this criminal case. At the place of his service in the Federal Government Institution “Penal Colony-Settlement No.11 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Orenburg region M.A.Kumarov has been described as a mediocre officer, he did not live at the place of his registration.
The provided circumstances in their totality gave the court grounds to evaluate the trend of M.A. Kumarov personality as criminal and deem impossible to perform unhindered judicial proceedings if any other pre-trial restraint measure is chosen – under the weight of brought charges M.A.Kumarov may attempt to abscond during the investigation or trial or obstruct justice in some other way».