Investigator Denis Ivlev suspended the investigation of the criminal case based on the death of Ivan Geliyev from Anapa in a police vehicle. Human rights defenders with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of Zalina Geliyeva, the sister of the deceased, claim that the criminal case is suspended illegaly, as the investigator did not conduct all the necessary activities, nor did he familiarize the victim with the expert examinations, the results of which were ready prior to the ruling on suspending.
(Ivan Geliyev)
As we have previously reported, on 30 June 2017 Zalina Geliyeva from Anapa applied to the Krasnodar branch of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture 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.
“In the course of preliminary investigation a large number of victims were questioned, expert examinations were conducted, including a situational expert examination, but, despite the significant performed scope of investigative and operative activities, at the present time it appears impossible to identify the person who committed the crime against I.A.Geliyev”, – investigator Ivlev claims in his ruling on suspending.
Lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Roman Veretennikov, representing the interests of the sister of the deceased, does not agree to this: “We are convinced that not everything possible was done to incriminate the culprits in this criminal case. In particular, there was no re-labelling process in the case for a graver deed, with regard to this, it is impossible to perform such an investigative activity as speaking monitoring and recording. Also, the investigator did not obtain the results of the repeated situational forensic medical examination and a comprehensive forensic enquiry. We will appeal against this ruling of the investigator and will insist that the investigation of this criminal case is handed over to a higher level, since the Anapa investigators discredited themselves in this case”.