On March 29 the Bashkirian investigative authorities finally acknowledged Oktyabrsky resident Olga Karsakova victim, her brother had died in the remand prison of the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs eight years ago. And only eight years after the incident (!!!) criminal proceedings upon the fact infliction of injuries to Mikhail Timin were instigated.

We would like to remind you that on March 16, 2004 Mikhail’s sister Olga Karsakova applied to the Committee Against Torture. In course of public investigation the CAT established that Mikhail Timin had been detained on 10 March 2004. While he was in the remand prison, his condition aggravated. Although doctors many times insisted on urgent hospitalization, the police did not only leave the man in the detention facility, but placed him in a solitary cell to spare themselves trouble. In the early morning on 13 March 2004 Mr. Timin died in course of a fit. A forensic medical examination showed that his heart had failed.

The prosecutorial investigation into Timin’s death was extremely ineffective. For several years the investigative authorities kept on issuing refusals to instigate criminal proceedings which were found unlawful following ICAT’s appeals.

Five years after the incident the city and republican courts found another refusal to instigate criminal proceedings lawful. CAT lawyers had to lodge a supervisory appeal with the Supreme Court of Bashkiria in order to have the ill-founded refusal quashed. At the same time, the CAT filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights which was communicated in 2011.

And only yesterday, on the eve of Russian Investigative Committee Head Alexander Bastrykin’s visit to the Republic of Bashkiria (Bastrykin has already held several investigative authority heads from Tatarstan disciplinary responsible for similar violations), their Bashkirian colleagues have eliminated the violation lasting almost 8 years.