Investigator Ramil Giniatullin dismissed the investigation of the criminal case based on the fact of the battery of Radik Dautov from Belebey at the local police department – as we have previously reported, his jaw and nose were broken there. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of Dautov, will be appealing against this ruling of the investigator.
Radik Dautov from Belebey applied to human rights defenders for legal assistance in summer of 2017. On 7 July of last year he was having rest with his friends at a city café. After that about 1 a.m. Radik went on foot in the direction of his home. The Patrol and Guard Service officers stopped him on the way and informed him that he was in the state of drunkenness and should go with them to the police department.
Upon arrival at the police department Radik became indignant at the fact of his taking to the department and refused to get out of the service car, due to that the Patrol and Guard Service officers and other officers, who were in civilian clothes, forced him to the building of the Department of the Interior of the Belebeyevsky District and Belebey town.
In the police premises Radik was in one of the offices together with the Patrol and Guard officer who delivered him to the police department and was drawing up the protocol. According to Radik, sometime later four officers in civilian clothes went into the room, handcuffed him and forced him into the corridor.
— After these four brought me out to the corridor, one of them attempted to put me down by pulling the handcuffs from the back. The second officer hit me about a dozen times at the groin area, – Radik recalls. – Then they succeeded to bring me down and I fell on my knees, after that all four officers started to hit and kick me against the body and the hands. About five times my nose was hit and the jaw area from both sides.
According to Radik, the battery ceased after about half an hour, after that the officers brought the victim inside the room where the same Partol and Guard Service officer demanded that Radik breathed in a special tube in order to determine the alcohol content in his blood. However, Radik refused to do it and asked to take him to hospital to undergo medical examination.
As Radik explained, he spent the whole night at the police department and only at 7 a.m. managed to contact an acquaintance of his, a police officer, who arrived at the department right away and took Radik away.
On the same day, 8 July, Radik applied first to the hospital of Belebey town, and then submitted a crime report to the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Bashkortostan.
On 7 August 2017, the Chairman of the Belebeyevsky Interdistrict Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Bashkortostan passed a ruling on initiating criminal proceedings with relation to crime under item “a” of part 3 Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“exceeding official authority with the use of violence”). Nine days after Radik Dautov was declared a victim.
On 18 August, the forensic medical examination was conducted in the framework of the criminal case investigation, which demonstrated that the victim’s numerous injuries (closed craniocerebral injury, brain contusion, fracture of the right jaw on the right, major subdermal hematoma of the groin area, bruises at both wrists, numerous bruises of the face, body, limbs) “fall into a category of injuries of moderate health damage”.
Today, it has become known to human rights defenders that, on 7 July of this year, investigator Ramil Giniatullin passed a ruling on dismissal of the criminal case due to absence of the elements of crime. In his ruling, the investigator raised doubts that Radik could be inflicted the bodily injuries at the police department and concluded that they developed during the fight in the course of apprehension.
“In the ruling on dismissal of the criminal case Giniatullin refers to the evidence provided by the police officers who performed apprehension, and to the records of the surveillance cameras, which feature only Dautov talking to the police officers about something, and when a police officer tries to approach him, he steps back, continuing the conversation, after which the video stops. It has remained unknown what became of the surveillance cameras installed inside the police department. We certainly will be appealing against this ruling of the investigator”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Evgeny Litvinov, representing the interests of Radik Dautov, comments.
“I would like to point out that the arguments of Radik Dautov concerning the pattern of the injuries infliction, in particular, fracture of the jaw and hematomas in the crotch region, have not been, in their essence, disproved by investigator Giniatullin, – Evgeny Litvinov continues. – However, this did not prevent the investigator from agreeing to the theory of the police officers that Dautov “repeatedly fell with his face down against the stones and the roots of the trees”.