Investigator Denis Ivlev passed a ruling to dismiss a criminal case based on causing death to Ivan Geilyev from Anapa in a police vehicle. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of the sister of the deceased, Zalina Geliyeva, think that this criminal case was dismissed illegally, since the contradictions between the witnesses’ statements are not resolved and several key events of the incident are not identified, and a number of the conducted expert examinations cast doubts in their professionalism and objectivity.
(Ivan Geliyev)
As we have previously reported, on 30 June 2017 Zalina Geliyeva from Anapa applied to human rights defenders for legal assistance. She informed human rights defenders that her brother Ivan died in the police vehicle’s cell for apprehended early in the morning on 18 March of last year.
During public investigation, human rights defenders managed to clarify some circumstances of the incident. At about 4 hours 15 minutes on 18 March 2017, 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”.
However, the handover of the criminal case to the new investigator did not bring visible results. On 29 May 2018, Mr Ivlev passed a ruling on suspending the criminal case due to failure to identify the defendant. In order to obtain a copy of this ruling, Zalina Geliyeva also had to submit a complaint to the head of the Investigative Department. Later on, this ruling of the investigator was quashed and the investigation of the criminal case was extended by a month.
However, on 29 June of this year, Denis Ivlev passed a ruling on dismissal of this criminal case. According to the investigator, the death of Ivan Geliyev was not criminal, but was caused by acute heart failure.
In his ruling, refusing the opening of the criminal case, Mr Ivlev, among other things, is referring to the results of the repeated situational single-discipline expert panel, which states that “it may be considered that the most probable cause of death of I.A.Geliyev was the development of acute heart failure as a complication of cardiopathy, the heart condition that he had… The development of acute heart failure was provoked by cumulative action of a number of factors: alcoholic intoxication, psychoemotional and physical stress (had a conflict with police officers), physical fatigue”.
In addition, investigator Ivlev, ignoring the results of the first and the second medical forensic examinations regarding the cause of death, indicates: “During the analysis of the data, obtained in the course of the preliminary investigation, it was established that no objective data was obtained that could confirm the impact force in the area of the left cervical neurovascular tract (sinocarotid knot), from which the closed blunt trauma of the neck with local hemorrhaging in the area of the left cervical neurovascular tract (sinocarotid knot)”.
“It is unclear for us, why investigator Ivlev utterly rejects the results of the first and the second medical forensic examinations but entirely trusts the last one. In addition, the investigator did not resolve serious inconsistencies in witnesses’ statements, did not reliably establish where the deceased was for about one and a half hours while he was being taken to the police department, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Sergey Romanov, representing the interests of the sister of the deceased, comments. – We take the results of several expert examinations performed in the framework of the criminal case, with a grain of salt and we’ll order reviews on them. We shall definitely appeal against the investigator’s ruling on dismissal of the criminal case”.