Yesterday, on 24 October 2018, judge of the Orenburg Regional Court declared illegal the dismissal of a claim to open a criminal case with regard to the application from Vladimir Arkhipov from Orenburg concerning the battery performed in 2011 by the road patrol officers. During nine-years’ long check, the investigators have dismissed the claim to open a criminal case for twenty times. After this court ruling they will have to perform a pre-investigative check for the twenty-first time.
As we have previously reported, according to Vladimir, at night on August 11-12, 2011 he was stopped by the traffic police. Vladimir came out of the car and produced his documents to the officer. The police two times subjected him to the breath alcohol test and told him that he was drunk without showing the results of the test. After that the police proposed that Vladimir should call someone who could help him to solve the problem. Vladimir stated that he was sober and expressed his readiness to pass a blood test. Apparently, the police was not satisfied with the answer. All of a sudden one of the officers hit Vladimir in the temple with his fist.
After that Vladimir was ordered to get into the police car and pass the test again in presence of attesting witnesses. Then the police let him out. Arkhipov got into his own car and shut the doors. One of the officers demanded that the driver should open the doors and get out. Vladimir refused to do so because he was afraid that they would beat him again. One of the officers opened the trunk door, crushed the rear seats, got inside the car and started choking Vladimir. While Arkhipov was trying to free himself, another policeman opened the door and started applying an electric shocker to him. At the same time, other traffic policemen were hitting him in the head and trunk. The last blow which made Vladimir faint was in the nose.
When Vladimir came to himself he saw that his nose was broken and his T-shirt and jeans were smeared with blood. The police were standing nearby. Vladimir asked them to call an ambulance because he suffered from incoagulability and could die of blood loss. The police noticed that the nose bleeding did not cease and threw him a cell phone. Vladimir called an ambulance which immediately took him to hospital.
The following morning Arkhipov was examined by a forensic-medical expert. The same day he was hospitalized for 10 days.
Arkhipov has provided human rights defenders with the medical documents confirming his injuries: a record stating that he has abrasions and contusions, an excerpt from his clinical record describing his injuries – a brain concussion, contusions of head and face soft tissues, as well as a record stating that Vladimir has burns and traces of electrocution on the body.
No criminal case was initiated based on Vladimir Arkhipov’s complaint, and for several years already the investigative body has been performing the check, in the course of which the investigators over and over again pass illegal rulings refusing to initiate criminal proceedings, which are quashed after the complaints of the lawyers with the Committee Against Torture. At the present moment twenty of such rulings have been issued.
In the course of the public investigation based on Arkhipov’s application, human rights defenders learned that the investigators lost his clinical record, which is crucial for conducting expert medical examination in order to establish the degree of damage inflicted to Vladimir. Later on the fact of the loss was confirmed as a result of pre-investigative and agency check.
Due to reluctance of the investigative authorities to perform effective investigation based on Arkhipov’s complaint against torture, in 2013 lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted a complaint on his behalf to the European Court of Human Rights.
On 5 July 2018 the complaint was communicated.
On 27 February 2020, investigator of the first department for major cases with the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Orenburg region Sergey Anisimov issued the twentieth ruling dismissing a claim to open a criminal case, which was declared legal in September 2020 by the Leninsky District Court of Orenburg. Laywers with the Committee Against Torture appealed against this ruling at the court of appeals.
Yesterday, on 2 December 2020, judge of the Orenburg Regional Court Svetlana Chernova, despite the objections of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee’s representatives, satisfied the human rights defenders’ application and quashed the ruling of the District Court, as well as declared illegal the dismissal of investigator Sergey Anisimov.
“It is comforting that the court, when passing this ruling, agreed to our arguments, and closely examined the material of the check. Amongst other things, in our application we referred to the discrepancies of the investigation, which the regional Prosecutor’s Office referred to previously, and which have not been rectified by the investigators up to the present time, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Albina Mudarisova comments. – The more surprising it was to hear the Prosecutor’s Office’s representative in court who asked to dismiss the application”.
As we have previously reported, in 2018, the Leninsky District Court of Orenburg collected ten thousand rubles from the Investigative Committee for the benefit of Vladimir Arkhipov for seven years of red tape committed during the check of his complaint about the police battery.