Photo: Oleg Popov who died at the police-station.

   The Committee against Torture has started investigating the death at the police-station.

   The Orenburg office of INGO “Committee against Torture” has received an application from a woman from Orsk (Orenburg region) claiming that on 16 July this year officers of the Sovietsky district Department of Internal Affairs killed her son Oleg Popov and later fabricated evidence to demonstrate that the man had hanged himself. According to the woman, she had to apply to the Committee two months after the incident due to inaction of the prosecutorial investigator who had spent 30 days instead of 10 (as it should be under law) checking her application and issued a refusal to open criminal proceedings.

The Committee lawyers performed a check and studied the document containing the investigator’s refusal. The check showed that the circumstances of Mr. Popov’s death described by the investigator appeared to be rather strange. Mr. Popov was taken to the Department of Internal Affairs after he had a conflict with his wife, the police never prepared any administrative offense protocol related to that detention. Some time later the man was “found” hanging on his belt in the administrative detention cell.

The official check resulted in several disciplinary penalties for officers of the Sovietsky district Department of Internal Affairs.