Resident of Vyselki village of the Krasnodar Territory Artur Churkin claims that local police officers beat him up and tortured him with electricity, demanding to confess of stealing electrical tools. For eleven months it has been the sixth application of the Vyselkovsky District residents to the Committee Against Torture with regard to tortures at the local police station.
On 2 November 2020, resident of Vyselki village of the Krasnodar Territory Artur Churkin applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assitance. He reported that on 14 October 2020, police officers came up to his home and asked him to come with them for a “conversation” to the Department of the Ministry of the Interior of Russia for the Vyselkovsky District. According to Churkin, there the police officers demanded that he confessed of theft of electrical tools, and, after they received a refusal, they took him for “fishing”.
According to Artur, the police officers took him out of the village, having put a plastic bag on his head before that. When they reached their destination, in the area of the forest belt, one of the police officers tied his hands with scotch tape criss-cross and put a plastic bag on his head, again.
According to Artur, one of the police officers ordered him to lower his trousers and bend over: “To my question why this needs to be done, I was told that I committed an offence and was going to get a good spanking for this”. I bend down and felt a hit with a willow (a whip – comment by the author) against my buttocks. It was unpleasant but not very painful. I started to ask them why they were doing this. They continued to beat me up, they made several dozen hits. The pain was tolerable”.
After that, according to Arthur, having said that “somehow willow does not do him any good” the police officers tied his feet up with a scotch tape and, under the threat of hitting him, forced him to lie on the ground. Then, one of the officers took a small box with two wires out of the car, and tied one wire to the big toe of his right foot and the second one – to the little toe of his left foot.
“He poured my feet with water up to my knees, and put a plastic bag on my head. I heard the clicks of the switch, after which I felt a sharp pain in the feet area. This pain was unbearable. They turned on electricity for about 20-30 seconds. Between the charges they asked me if I recalled anything. I cried very loudly, then I started to weep with pain. They were telling me no one would hear me. It lasted for a long time, I cannot tell how long”, – Artur says.
According to Churkin, during electrical charges he attempted to stand up, but one of the police officers sat on him and started to slap on his face.
Then, according to Artur, he was brought back to the police department, where he wrote a confession as dictated by the police officers, confessing of stealing the electrical tools. A protocol on administrative offence under Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offence of the Russian Federation (“failure to obey to lawful order or demand of a police officer”) was also drawn up – allegedly, he refused to go with police officers from his home to the police department and attempted to flee from them. Subsequently, the court assigned Churkin a fine of five hundred rubles for this offence.
On the next day, Artur applied to Vyselkovskaya Central District Hospital, where a traumatologist registered the following injuries on him: “Contusions, extravasations of the soft tissues of the face, surface wounds of the mucous membrane of the lips and the left cheek area with a violet color, bruises in the area of the elbow joints”.
On 16 October, Artur applied with a complaint against the actions of the police officers to the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Vyselkovsky District.
On 5 November, lawyers with the Committee Against Tortures submitted an application on behalf of Churkin with a crime report to the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Vyselkovsky District.
“This has been the sixth application of the residents of the Vyselkovsky District with complaints about tortures at the local police department for the past eleven months. Notably, same police officers are mentioned in all the applications, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Ilya Platonov comments. – Definitely, such a situation demands involvement at the regional level, and we informed about it Prosecutor of the Krasnodar Territory Sergey Tabelsky during the personal appointment, and told him also about all complaints of torture at the local police department”.