«I deeply regret about the incident and I offer you my most sincere apologies. I thank you for your understanding and hope that this incident will not influence your opinion about the positive image of the internal affairs officer», – interim officer of the Department of Extradepartmental Security of the Department of the Ministry of the Interior of the RF for the Orenburg region Gennadiy Burachenok wrote in his letter with apologies for Aleksey Sukhov, who was beaten up by the Extradepartmental Security and tried to plant drugs on him.
As we have previously reported, on 28 October of last year judge of the Lenisnkiy District Court of Orenburg Aleksey Konnov pronounced the verdict for former police officers Konstantin Sinyagin and Aleksey Reshetilov. They were declared guilty of committing a crime under Article 286 (3) (a), (b) of Russian Criminal Code (exceeding official powers with use of violence and special equipment) and sentenced to three and a half years of prison term each to be served at the penal colony of standard regime. The convicts were taken into custody in the court room. On 29 February 2016 this verdict was upheld and came into legal force.
(Aleksey Reshetilov and Konstantin Sinyagin)
The background of this case is as follows. On 11 April 2012 Aleksey Sukhov from the Orenburg region applied to the Orenburg branch of INGO «The Committee Against Torture» for legal assistance. He told the human rights defenders that on 29 August 2011 he returned home to Prigorodny settlement after driving school training. Not far from home he was stopped by two police officers who decided to search Aleksey. According to Sukhov, during the search he saw that the police officers were trying to plaint some marijuana on him – Aleksey started to express his indignation with the unlawful actions of the law-enforcement officers, trying to attract the attention of the passers-by. However, shouting did not help and the police officers severely beat the man up, after that they took him to the local cemetery, promising that they would «bury him right there».
After these threats Sukhov was taken to the police department and a criminal case was initiated against him under part 1 of Article 228 of the Russian Criminal Code (illegal purchase and storage of a large quantity of drug substance without the intention to sell). However, later on this criminal case was dismissed for absence of a criminal act.
As a result of «communication» with the police officers Aleksey Sukhov got bodily injuries in the form of closed craniocerebral injury, cerebral concussion, haematoma of soft tissues, a bruise in the eye area, subconjunctival hemorrhage of the left eye, scratch marks on the body.
(Photo: Aleksey Sukhov after the battery; at the picket in support of torture victims)
It was decided to turn for legal support to the human rights defenders who got involved in the case in the capacity of Sukhov’s representatives. Later on, in February 2013, lawyers of the Committee Against Torture established in court that no check on Sukhov’s statement was performed since September 2012 at all. The court compelled the head of the investigative department for the Southern administrative district of Orenburg of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Orenburg region Yevgeny Karyakin to rectify the breach. However, he had not enforce court decision until the new application of human rights defenders to court in September 2013 when it was established that the previous court decision had not been enforced by the investigative authority for more than 7 months.
Thus, after a long period of lodging a complaint against the inaction of the investigative authority officers, Yevgeny Karyakin was relieved from his post, and in May 2014, at last, the criminal case based on Sukhov’s complaint, was initiated. Investigation of the case was assigned to investigator of the first department for major cases investigation of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Orenburg region Denis Khusainov. Only one and a half months after the criminal case was opened Mr.Khusainov declared Mr.Sukhov the affected party, despite the requirements of the Russian Criminal Code to formalize the status of the affected party immediately after the case opening. One of the first investigative actions conducted by Khusainov was questioning the victim’s representative – lawyer of the Committee Against Torture, and the questioning of the victim himself filled only four lines of text.
Only after the case was referred to investigator Dmitry Zelenin the situation changed: he conducted all necessary investigative activities, after which prosecutor of Leninsky region of Orenburg Aleksandr Fadeyev upheld the indictment with regards to two former police officers, and the case was submitted to court.
«We are satisfied that the official apologies were at last offered to our applicant. It is a pity, however, that the police superiors did not responded to our offer to give lectures for police officers on inadmissibility of human rights violations», – lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Albina Mudarisova, representing the interests of Aleksey Sukhov, comments.