Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted an application to the ECHR concerning the ruling of the Russian court, according to which Aleksey Gorkov from Arzamas in the Nizhny Novgorod region, suffered from the battery by a police officer, is entitled to 30 thousand roubles of compensation for moral damage.  

Gorkov applied to the Committee Against Torture in 2015. He told human rights defenders that in 2014 he had a smoke at a bus stop, and a woman standing nearby beat a cigarette out of his mouth, after that some thrashing started and a woman called for police. Aleksey was apprehended and taken to the police department. On the way, police officer Konstantin Mizanov hit the apprehended several times in the face, legs and in the groin area. Later on, he explained it by wanting to calm down the apprehended who was actively “tossing about” and caused obstructions for driving the car.       

The woman at the bus stop turned out to be a justice of peace, that is why Aleksey soon became involved in the criminal case on threat to life and assault on a person on duty (Part 2 Article 119, item “b” of part 2 Article 112 of the Criminal Code). The man spent half a year at the Pre-Trial Detention Facility and three more months – under house arrest.  After that, his case was dismissed on amnesty.

After the CAT lawyers submitted a crime report to the Investigative Committee, a criminal case was opened against Mizanov on abuse of office with the use of violence (item “a” of Part 3, Article 286 of the Criminal Code). Thanks to the dash camera video record that shows the police officer beating up the apprehended, the guilt was proven and the culprit was sentenced to three years of conditional term. The police officer acknowledged his guilt, the court hearing was performed under special procedure.     

The Committee Against Torture submitted a lawsuit on collecting 300 thousand roubles for the benefit of Gorkov, but as a result, the court passed a ruling to pay the victim only 30 thousand roubles. Half a year passed since then, but he never received a compensation. The attempts to appeal against the court ruling in the superior instances were unsuccessful.   

— We appealed against the ruling of the court of the first instance, first on appeal and then on cassation, but alas, in both cases the courts refused to review the amount of compensation, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Sergey Shounin, representing the interests of Aleksey Gorkov, comments. — That is why all hope now is for the ECHR. Alas, this is the last straw the applicant still may grasp at. Whether our future applicants will have this opportunity is not clear at all.