Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture successfully insisted on suspending from duty investigator Evgeny Lisyansky in the case of the death of Ivan Geliyev from Anapa at the section for the detained of the police UAZ vehicle. According to human rights defenders, Mr Lisyansky investigated this case highly inefficiently – a year after the tragedy there is not a single suspect in the case.
As we have previously reported, on 30 June 2017 Zalina Geliyeva from Anapa applied to the Krasnodar branch of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture for legal assistance. She informed human rights defenders that her brother Ivan died in the police UAZ vehicle’s cell for apprehended early in the morning on 18 March of this year.
During public investigation, human rights defenders managed to clarify some circumstances of the incident. About 4 hours 15 minutes on 18 March of this year Ivan Geliyev arrived at the cross-section of Vladimirskaya street and Shevchenko street of Anapa at the request of his friend who was detained by the Road Patrol Service for drunk driving. Ivan started to argue with the police officers loudly, in response the Road Patrol Service officers applied physical force and hand-cuffed him. Sometime later a Patrol-Guard Service arrived at the scene of the incident, its officers together with their colleagues from Road Patrol Service loaded Geliyev, who offered resistance, to police UAZ vehicle’s cell for apprehended and took him to the Department of the Interior of Russia for Anapa.
Having arrived at the police department the Road Patrol Service officers revealed that Ivan was in unconscious state and gave no signs of life. The medical aid team that arrived at the place of the incident simply had to establish the fact of the death of the apprehended person.
On the same day, 18 March, Zalina Geliyeva applied with the crime report to the Investigative Committee, however, criminal case under Part 1 Article 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“death by negligence”) was initiated only on 29 May.
According to the conclusion of the forensic medical expert, Ivan Geliyev’s death occurred as a result of “closed blunt trauma of the neck with local hemorrhaging in the area of left cervical neurovascular tract (sinocarotid nodosity), was followed by primary traumatic shock and caused reflectory heart failure which became the direct cause of death… Closed blunt trauma of the neck could be inflicted by impact action of blunt hard object directly in the neck area on the left, created instant danger to life, and based on this is qualified as inflicting grave bodily harm. The trauma occurred shortly before death, in the range from several minutes to several dozens of minutes. This neck trauma has a direct causal relation to the death coming”.
Since the beginning of the investigation lawyers with the Committee Against Torture and victim Zalina Geliyeva literally have to force investigator Evgeny Lisyansky to conduct necessary investigative activities. Some of them, which had to be performed at the early stages of the investigation, were conducted months after the beginning of the investigation. Investigator Lisyansky did not question all the witnesses for the criminal case and was very slow in gathering the documents and materials necessary for conducting expert examination reviews.
Applications informing about the facts of red tape were sent to investigator Lisyansky’s superiors as well as to the Investigative Department and the Prosecutor’s Office. After these applications, in the end of the last month, the criminal case was handed over from investigator Lisyansky to investigator Denis Ivlev. In addition, Deputy Head of the Investigative Department for Anapa was brought to disciplinary responsibility for “inappropriate review of the victim Geliyeva’s application”.
At the present time, the investigative period is extended till 29 March 2018.
“We hope that investigator Denis Ivlev will find enough professionalism, persistence and intention to establish who inflicted a deadly wound to Ivan Gevliev, and the investigation which he is conducting will be developing without unjustified delays. We also hope that the management of the Investigative Department for Anapa will adequately respond to the applications of the victim and her representatives”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Roman Veretennikov comments.