Once again, the Investigative Committee investigators resumed the investigation of the criminal case on tortures of Evgeny Bounin from the Tuapse district at the police department in November 2018 – before that the case was illegally dismissed five times. The lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of the victim, will insist that the investigators who committed the red tape, are punished, as well as the officers of the Tuapse Prosecutor’s Office who failed to perform an adequate supervision of this case investigation.

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 five times, the last time on 2 April 2020. When dismissing the criminal case, the investigators every time came to the conclusion that no one beat up Bounin at the police department.
 
Investigators issued three last refusals to initiate criminal proceedings, having failed to comply with the Prosecutor’s Office instructions to conduct investigative activities which were issued back in November 2019.

Today, First Deputy of the Tuapse Interdistrict Prosecutor Andrey Manayev informed human rights defenders that on 6 April 2020, the investigation of Evgeny Bounin’s tortures at the police department was resumed. The Prosecutor’s Office representative also pointed out that “due to the red tape committed during the investigation of this criminal case, on 14.04.2020 a demand is addressed to the head of the investigative authority to rectify the breaches of the federal legislation which were committed during the preliminary investigation”.   

“When in the autumn of last year, the Prosecutor’s Office quashed the second dismissal of the criminal case and provided concrete instructions with regard to it, the investigators three times dismissed the case, simply ignoring the Prosecutor’s Office instructions, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Roman Veretennikov, representing the interests of Evgeny Bounin, comments. – We shall insist that the investigators who committed the red tape, are punished, as well as the officers of the Tuapse Prosecutor’s Office who failed to perform an adequate supervision of this case investigation”.