Photo: Andrey Bok / Znak.com

The analysts of the Committee Against Torture calculated how many times the Russian police officers apologized to the people whose rights they violated – this is the legal requirement. The statistics turned out to be dismal.

The order of the Ministry of the Interior “On the procedure of offering apologies to the citizen, the rights and the freedoms of which were violated by a police officer” entered into force in September 2012. Since that time, the Committee had 19 cases when the police officers were obliged to apologize. Only in two of them the apologies were offered at the police officers’ initiative and within a time limit provided by the order. In 16 cases, the victims or their representatives were forced to initiate the apologies themselves. In one case, the police officers apologized only after the demand of the superior authority, violating the time limitations.

Twice the Committee Against Torture applied to the Ministry of the Interior to bring the department’s attention to the fact that the order was not working. To the first application in 2019, the Ministry responded saying that the departmental list of data on the employees subjected to criminal prosecution or disciplinary action was already in place; the Ministry promised to take into consideration the information on the gaps in the law enforcement practice. To the second application the response was that the apologies accounting is still not available and will not be available. In the end of last year, the lawyers submitted another application to the Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev which remained neglected.