During seven years the investigative authorities have been conducting the investigation based on the complaint of Vladimir Prytkov from Orenburg against the police torture. During this period of time the investigators have illegally dismissed the criminal case six times, and managed to lose the samples of the blood samples obtained in the office of the operative officers during the visual inspection of the scene of the incident. The complaint of human rights defenders against the last dismissal of the criminal case travelled a long way for half a year: first it went to the Prosecutor’s Office, then – to the district court, after – to the regional court and returned to the district court. Today, in the course of the court hearing it has become known that this decree on dismissal of the criminal case is quashed as illegal.
(Vladimir Prytkov)
As we have previously reported, on 19 July 2010 Vladimir Prytkov from Orenburg applied to the regional branch of the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance – the man claimed that he was severely beaten up by the policemen from 2nd Operational Investigation Unit of the Orenburg Regional Directorate of the Interior.
As Vladimir told the human right defenders, on May 19, 2010 he was detained at work and delivered to the 2nd Operational Investigation Unit of the Orenburg Regional Directorate of the Interior. There, according to Prytkov, he was beaten and tortured for about four hours with the purpose of making him confess that he together with his brother was involved in car theft, or to pay a bribe so that he would be only a witness in this case, unlike his brother. Having failed to obtain a confession from Vladimir, the police had to release him.
After such «conversation» with the representatives of the authorities Vladimir went straight to the city hospital No.1, and after his condition grew worse he was urgently hospitalized in the city clinical hospital named after N.I.Pirogov. The following diagnosis was established: «combined craniocerebral injury, brain contusion of medium severity, subarachnoid hemorrhage, contusions of soft tissues of the head, chest contusion, arterial hypertension of 1 and 2 degree. Asthenoneurotic syndrome». After he was released from the Pirogov hospital as an in-patient Vladimir was undergoing out-patient treatment in its outpatient clinic for three months.
On 28 June 2010 Prytkov submitted a crime report upon the fact of police abuse to investigative authorities, however for over a year the investigators failed to open a criminal case. Only on 16 November 2011 it was opened on the grounds of evidence of a crime under Article 286 (3) (a) of the Criminal Code of Russia (exceeding official powers with the use of violence).
Despite numerous motions for conducting investigating actions and complaints against inaction of the investigative authorities, submitted by the human rights defenders on behalf of Prytkov, the case was repeatedly dismissed on the grounds that no crime had been committed. The last time investigator Dmitry Gryaznov dismissed the criminal case in July 2016.
After getting acquainted with the materials of the criminal case the lawyers with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture applied the complaint against the investigator’s ruling to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Promyshlenny District of Orenburg. The Prosecutor’s Office declared the investigator’s ruling to be legal and grounded. The court of the first instance took up a similar stance.
However, on 22 August judge of the Orenburg Regional Court Tatyana Kalugina, having examined the arguments of human rights defenders, concluded that the ruling of the Promyshlenny District Court of Orenburg was illegal and ungrounded, dismissed it and passed a ruling to return the complaint for a new judicial examination by a different court composition.
In support of her stance Mrs Kalugina, among other things, indicated that “the investigator did not provide either individual or total evaluation of the following evidence: witnesses testimony, protocol of the visual inspection of the scene of the incident, medical forensic examination conclusion, Vladimir Prytkov’s bodily injury. The investigator did not follow the instructions of the head of the department of the procedural control in full scope”.
Today, in the course of new examination of this complaint in the court of the first instance the representative of the Prosecutor’s Office provided the copy of the ruling of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Orenburg region dated 18 September on quashing the investigator’s illegal dismissal of the criminal case, as a result of which the proceedings with relation to the complaint was stopped.
“I completely fail to comprehend the stance of investigator Dmitry Gryaznov in relation to this criminal case, taking into account that this is a quite experienced specialist with the first department for major cases investigation of the regional Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee, – human rights defender Albina Mudarisova, representing the interests of Vladimir Prytkov comments. – Time after time the investigator issues dismissals of the criminal case on one and the same ground – allegedly, no element of crime is present. These dismissals with one and the same wordings are declared illegal time after time. At the same time it is we as the victim’s representatives who appear initiators of these rulings, and not the Prosecutor’s Office or the superiors of the regional Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee. At that neither the supervisory body nor Mr Gryazev’s superiors do not quash these illegal rulings at their initiative, but wait for courts’ rulings, by which they contribute to prolonging the time of criminal proceedings. In relation to this we intend to insist on handing over the case to another investigator as well as on brining all parties guilty of red tape to responsibility”.
It is worth noting that on 7 November 2015, as a result of obvious reluctance of the investigative authorities to investigate the criminal case based on the fact of Vladimir Prytkov’s police torture, human rights defenders were forced to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.