The Nizhny Novgorod police department officers lost the materials of the check of a convict’s battery in the penal colony. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture already submitted a crime report to the Investigative Committee, as well as applied to the Prosecutor’s office demanding to carry out some response action. Internal check on this matter is ongoing.
As we have previously reported, in September 2015, Nina Markova applied to human rights defenders asking to initiate public investigation based on the fact of violent death of her brother, Aleksandr Kulemin, in November 2014, at the same Penal Colony No.14 (the Nizhny Novgorod region, the Sukhovobezvodnoye settlement). Kulemin started to serve the sentence at the same penal colony in October 2014, and as early as in November Markova received a telegram about the death of her brother.
Posthumous expert examination of Aleksandr Kulemin also registered numerous bodily injuries on his body: “Closed blunt craniocerebral injury, bruises of the frontal region, nose, extravasation of the upper lid of the left eye, hemorrhagings in the soft tissues of the head in the frontal region, in the circumference of the left and the right cerebral hemispheres (each 15 ml in volume), under soft brain tunics on hemispherical surface of the left and right frontal lobes, swell and cerebral compression, focal hemorrhaging with degeneration of cerebral tissue in the brainstem, closed indirect fractures of the 5-th, 6-th and 7-th ribs on the left, bruises of the left forearm, right forearm, in the area of the left elbow joint, the first finger of the right foot, the second finger of the right foot, the first finger of the left foot, extravasation in the area of the right elbow joint”.
Despite the described bodily injuries, the official special reports of Penal Colony No.14 superiors with regard to these deaths feature one and the same preliminary diagnosis: “acute cardiovascular inefficiency”.
The criminal case with regard to the death Kulemin was opened on 18 May 2015. According to the investigators, a crime under part 4 Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Russia (“intended infliction of grave bodily harm causing the victim’s death by negligence”) was committed.
The investigation of this criminal case was suspended three times due to impossibility to identify the culprits. However, subsequently all the rulings on suspending were quashed by higher superiors due to incompleteness of the investigation. In April of last year human rights defenders succeeded to transfer this case to the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Nizhny Novgorod region, but there are still no defendants in the case.
However, in the course of this investigation the investigators established the element of crime in the actions of two convicts with regard to Kulemin –battery (Article 116 of the Criminal Code of Russia).
The materials concerning this crime were severed from the main criminal case on the death, and transferred for investigation to the Department of the Ministry of the Interior of Russia for urban district “Semenovsky”.
“When I came to police department to familiarize myself with these materials, head of the department of district duty officers Roman Korotkov informed me that the materials are lost, and there is an internal check ongoing about this fact and measures are taken to restore them”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Sergey Shounin, representing the interests of Vera Markova, says.
According to Shounin, he submitted the crime report to the Investigative Committee on the same day, because he thinks that in this case it might be a negligence issue, and he also applied to the Semenovskaya City Prosecutor’s Office with a request to take some response action.
“Taking into account that the police officers of this department were subjected to disciplinary action before for improper investigation of a case on applying violence in Penal Colony No.14, and also that this case is followed up personally by the head of the regional Investigative Department, the situation looks even more revolting”, – Sergey Shounin emphasizes.
Penal Colony No.14 became notorious due to a large number of complaints against brutal treatment and tortures of convicts, as well as numerous cases at Penal Colony No.14 investigative detention facility when confessions were forced applying violence and violent actions of sexual character.
More information on what Penal Colony No.14 was like when Vasily Voloshin was its head, you can learn from Mediazona’s material as well as on the special website dedicated to the search of Василия Волошина.