Hearing of the criminal case against police officers of the Nizhegorodsky District Directorate of the Interior of Nizhny Novgorod – senior investigator of the Criminal Investigation Department, police captain Anatoly Timofeyev and investigator of the same department, police lieutenant Oleg Koreguin – charged with abusing Alexey Yakimov from Nizhny Novgorod will start on 24 December 2009 at 9 a.m. in the Nizhegorodsky district court.

   The case will be heard by federal judge Evgeny Pyryev. You may remember that the preliminary hearing under this case is scheduled for December 10, however it was postponed because one of the accused did not show up. Tomorrow it will become clear whether the policy of delay is the defense tactics of the indictees.

In spring 2009 Alexay Yakimov applied to the Interregional Committee Against Torture claiming that he had been abused by the police. Thanks to the effort of the CAT lawyers, at the end of April 2009 the investigation authorities had to start a criminal case on the allegations of Alexey’s battery.  

The police officers are charged under cl. “а“, “b” p. 3 art. 286 (abuse of office, i.e. actions of officials (state agents) clearly exceeding their official powers and causing substantial violations of individual’s or organization’s rights and legal interests committed with violent treatment or threat of violence and application of special tools), p. 1 art. 325 (destruction or damaging of an official document because of personal interests), p. 1 art. 119 (threat of murder or infliction of grave damage to health if there are grounds to believe the threat to be real), cl. “d”, “е” p. 2 art. 117 (Infliction of physical or moral suffering by means of systematic battery or other types of violent treatment, if such treatment does not lead to consequences described in articles 111 and 112 of the RF Criminal Code committed with the use of tortures by a group of people by previous concert) of the RF Criminal Code.