Investigator of the Investigative Department Igor Shutenko issued the fourth ruling to dismiss the criminal case with regard to police torture of Evgeny Bounin from the Tuapse District. Since the investigators who work on that case, are blatantly ignoring the demands of the Prosecutor’s Office and issue rulings known to be illegal, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture intend to insist that they are punished and Mr Bounin is compensated for moral damage related to inefficient investigation of his torture complaint.  

As we have previously reported, in November 2018, Evgeny Bounin from Indyuk settlement of the Tuapse region applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance. He told that on 12 November he was summoned for a conversation at the police department, located on Mira Street in Tuapse: there, in one of the offices of the criminal investigations department, one of the officers handcuffed him and demanded that he wrote a full confession of a phone theft.

“I said I was not involved in this. After that the police officer started to hit me on the head with first and palms of his hands. The pulled the hood of my coat on my head and after several blows my nose started to bleed and there appeared a pool of blood on the floor”, – Bounin recalls.

According to Evgeniy, the police officer, who strongly smelled of alcohol, threatened him that the battery would last for the whole night and as a result he would still be apprehended as a suspect.

“Having concerns for my health, I wrote the required confession at the dictation of another criminal investigations officer”, – Bounin continues.

According to Evgeniy, at the police department he was offered some vodka, after that the police officers brought him home in their vehicle, and on the road he continued to drink vodka with the police officer who had beaten him up.

In the morning of the next day, Bounin called an ambulance team to his house, and was put to Tuapse District Hospital No.1. There Evgeniy was diagnosed with: “Closed craniocerebral injury, brain concussion, extravasation of soft tissues of the right periorbital area, contusion of soft tissues of the occipital region”.

On the same day, 13 November, Evgeniy’s sister applied to the Investigative Committee with a crime report. According to Bounin, a forensic scientist came to his hospital immediately; he photographed and registered his bodily injuries.

The criminal case under elements of crime provided by items “a”, “b” in Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“abuse of office using violence and special equipment”) was initiated only on 16 April 2019.  

In the course of the investigation, the criminal case was dismissed four times, the last time on 20 February 2020. When dismissing the criminal case, the investigators every time came to the conclusion that no one beat up Bounin at the police department.  

Three similar refusals to initiate criminal proceedings have been already declared illegal, and another refusal of this sort will be also appealed against by lawyers with the Committee Against Torture.

“Back on 22 November of last year, the Prosecutor’s Office representative Sergey Ulchich pointed out in his notice that investigator Philipp Shevrikuko, who investigated this criminal case, failed to perform at least thirteen investigative activities required for passing the legal ruling, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Roman Veretennikov comments. – Now, new investigator in the case, Igor Shutenko passed identical ruling on dismissal of the criminal case, having failed to perform the same investigative activities, for example, he did not assign the expert examination of Bounin’s “confession”, or identified and questioned the medics with whom he was in hospital, did not request the audio record of Bounin’s statement during the call, etc. We think it is unacceptable when the investigators defiantly ignore the Prosecutor’s Office representatives’ notices and pass rulings known to be illegal, that is why we asked the superiors of the territorial Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Department that they punish their subordinates. We will also submit a lawsuit on Evgeny Bounin’s compensation for moral damage inflicted to him by ineffective investigation of his torture complaint”.