On 10 November 2010, at 16.00 in the Kirovsky district court of Ufa, there will be an oral hearing of the criminal case against officer of the external guard unit under the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs of Bashkiria Vladislav Simukhin.
You may remember that, according to the results of the official inquiry and public investigation conducted by the Bashkirian representation of the ICAT, Vladislav Simukhin, serving in the company of the extradepartmental security service under the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs in Bashkiria, received his service gun in the control room of the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs and, being intoxicated, decided not to go on duty, instead he took some more alcohol, wrote a farewell letter to his mother and went to Ufa taking his service gun with him. Simukhin spent the whole night boozing with his friends. In the morning the drunken sergeant felt an urge to go back to Oktyabrsky. He went to the taxi parking, his service gun and police uniform were in his bag. It was a tragic coincidence that on that day Ufa teacher Mukhametzakirov was driving a taxi in order to earn some additional money. Simukhin got in his car, paid for the ride to the Dema district of Ufa, but later demanded that Mukhametzakirov should take him to Oktyabrsky or give the money back. They quarreled, Mukhametzakirov refused to take Simukhin to Oktyabrsky. The sergeant, being in a drunken haze, took his service gun out of the bag and shot the teacher in the head. He died immediately. Despite abundant evidence, sergeant Simukhin has been pleading innocent throughout the proceedings. He claims that he did not want to kill the teacher, he took the gun out, reloaded it and put in a bullet “just to be more convincing” in order to intimidate Mukhametzakirov and make the teacher drive him to Oktyabrsky. According to Simukhin, the gun shot by accident, as a result of an abrupt deceleration.
Simukhin is charged under p.1 art.105 of the RF Criminal Code (murder, i.e. intentional infliction of death to a human-being).
Specialists of the Bashkirian representation of the Committee Against Torture represent the victims’ interests in court.