Investigative activities on the case of bashing of the office of the Joint Mobile Group of human rights defenders have been conducted today in Grozny. JMG members together with the Committee Against Torture have been declared the affected party in the case by the Investigative Department of the Ministry of the Interior.
«Caucasian Knot» reported that during the rally on 3 June unidentified persons attacked the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) office, where the representatives of the Committee Against Torture work. The attackers crushed the vehicle of the human rights defenders, destroyed the office and the apartment of the JMG. Members of the group managed to escape.
Head of the Committee Against Torture Igor Kalyapin reported today to the Caucasian Knot correspondent that the damage inflicted as a result of the bashing has not yet been evaluated.
«Throughout the day today the investigative department of the Ministry of the Interior for the Chechen Republic has been conducting investigative activities with participation of our colleagues. Our guys and the Committee Against Torture have been declared the affected party, – the appropriate ruling has been passed today. Now we are evaluating the damage, and the Ministry of the Interior will be making an expert examination of what has left of the vehicle, – again aiming at evaluating the damage», – Igor Kalyapin said.
According to him, the criminal case is being investigated in relation to articles on destruction of other persons property and illegal entry (articles 167 and 139 of the Criminal Code of Russia). Now the investigative department of the Ministry of the Interior is dealing with the investigation, but, according to Kalyapin’s information, the case is going to be passed on to the Investigative Committee.
«And we have demanded this ourselves, since in the part of the illegal entry this is the investigative authority of the Investigative Committee. In addition, we see other criminal aspects there, too, namely, the organization of disorder. It is clear that the objective of the attackers was not only entering the office and destroying everything in there, they had claims to the people, too, and they tried to make a certain influence», – head of the Committee Against Torture thinks.
So far no answer has been given to the statement addressed to the head of the Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin regarding the fact that the police did not react to the calls of the JMG members and had not been showing up at the scene of crime for about two and a half hours, Kalyapin added.
In the present time the Committee Against Torture is preparing a report about the incident in Grozny for Vladimir Putin. This report is going to contest the position of the Chechen authorities who claim that the Joint Mobile Group members provoked the aggression of the protest rally participants, Igor Kalyapin informed.
According to the version of the Chechen high authorities the members of the Committee Against Torture provoked the attack on their office in order to obtain «US grants».
Aida Magomedova
Source: Caucasian Knot