For over three and a half years a married couple from Nizhny Novgorod is trying to bring to responsibility the extra-departmental guard officers: according to Dmitry Kamzolov and Lyubov Abramova, in February 2014 the police officers brutally beat them up in their own apartment. The investigators seven times refused to initiate criminal proceedings, and in six of them these refusals were declared illegal. Despite the fact that in November of last year the materials of the check based on the application of the family were transferred to the first department for major crimes investigation of the regional Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee, and the superiors of the Sormovsky Investigative Department, which had conducted the check previously, were brought to disciplinary responsibility for red tape, the work of the investigators still cannot be called effective.
(Photo: Lyubov Abramova, Dmitry Kamzolov)
As we have previously reported, in February 2014 the Nizhny Novgorod Office of the Interregional NGO «Committee Against Torture» received an application from Mr Dmitry Kamzolov and his partner Ms Lyubov Abramova. According to them, on 10 February, in their own flat, they were severely beaten by private security guards.
According to Lyubov Abramova, before the attack she had had a conflict with a woman who had parked her car on the lawn so that people could hardly walk by. The women had a fight, and Lyubov’s partner Dmitry Kamzolov stopped it. Then the driver threatened the couple with some problems, saying that her husband was a cop.
Lyubov and Dmitry state that at about 8 pm someone rang at their door. Lyubov opened it, and two police officers entered their flat. They neither introduced themselves nor explained the reason for the visit. They started shouting «where is your man?!» Dmitry heard the noise and as well appeared before the door. Mr Kamzolov remembers an immediate blow in the face, so he had no time to say or understand anything, nor could he resist their actions. Then the policemen were beating them with hands and rubber truncheons, and handcuffed them in the end. «They explained nothing», says Ms Abramova, «they were beating us silently, with smiles on their faces». After that Dmitry was brought to Police Department № 8. The same day he was examined by a doctor in a local trauma center, who observed numerous bruises and abrasions. Ms Lyubov Abramova was as well examined and obtained a medical report.
On 20 February 2014 human rights defenders applied to the Sormovsky District Investigative Department of Nizhny Novgorod region Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation with a report on crime against Dmitry Kamzolov and Lyubov Abramova. On 16 April the investigator refused to initiate criminal proceedings. Later on, this investigative department will issue two more refusals, which will be quashed as illegal by the courts.
In November 2016 after lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture applied to head of the Investigative Committee of Russia Aleksandr Bastrykin, the materials of the check based on Mr Kamzolov and Mrs Abramova’s complaint were transferred from the district department to the department for major cases investigation of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Nizhny Novgorod region. The superiors of the Sormovsky Investigative Department were also brought to responsibility: head Andrey Kablov received a severe reprimand, his deputy Mariya Chuvstvina – an admonition.
Totally during the pre-investigative check the investigators passed six refusals to initiate criminal proceedings, six of them were declared illegal. The last refusal was issued by the investigator of the first department for major crimes investigation of the investigative department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Nizhny Novgorod region Aleksey Shoshin. Mr Shoshin came to the conclusion that the police officers were acting in strict accordance with the law and did not exceed their official powers.
During the issuing the refusal to initiate criminal proceedings investigator Shoshin ignored the instructions which he received from his superiors. For example, the investigator did not establish or question all the witnesses of the incident, did not perform the appropriate visual inspection of the scene of the incident, did not conduct a situational judicial examination, which would allow confirming or disproving the applicants’ theory on their bodily injuries.
“The investigation continues to evade the necessary checking activities, including sabotaging the instructions of their own superiors. We cannot accept such an approach of the investigator to his work, – lawyer with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Sergey Shounin, representing the interests of the married couple, comments. – We have already appealed to court against the last refusal to initiate the criminal proceedings. We also applied to Chairman of the Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin with a request to conduct the agency check with regard to the investigator and his direct superior in relation with the inefficient investigation”.