Today, on 24 April 2015, lawyers of interregional nongovernmental organization «The Committee Against Torture» applied to the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court with an appellate complaint against the decision of the judge of the Sovetsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod Olga Tonenkova. As we have previously reported, on 3 April 2015 she dismissed the application on declaring illegal the citation of the Nizhny Novgorod region Prosecutor Oleg Ponasenko based on which the Committee Against Torture was included in the list of non-commercial organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent.

As we have previously reported, in accordance with the law on non-commercial organizations (part 6 article 2 of the Federal law dated 12 January 1996 N 7-FZ), the activity aimed at changing the state policy is considered to be political activity of the non-governmental organization.

The Prosecutor’s citation mentioned, among other things, as an example of political activity aimed at changing the state policy, the fact of our organization informing the public audience and the state authorities representatives about the illegal violence in the police and of these incidents’ inefficient investigation of by the Investigative Committee bodies.

However, since neither torture nor inefficient investigation of such facts is the state policy in our country we cannot agree with the Nizhny Novgorod region Prosecutor that our actions were aimed at its changing. Thus we appealed against the prosecutor’s written response in the Sovetsky District Court of Nizhny Novgorod. 

Unfortunately, the court sided with the Prosecutor’s office and dismissed our application on declaring illegal the citation of the Nizhny Novgorod region Prosecutor.

INGO «The Committee Against Torture» Assistant Chairman Dmitry Kazakov, representing the interests of the organization in court: «We do not agree with this decision, in our opinion it is unlawful and has to be quashed due to inconsistency of the first instance court conclusions, set forth in the court decision, to the circumstances of the case, as well as due to incorrect application of the substantive law norms. We still think that the state policy involves protection of rights captured in the Constitution of Russia (right to protection from crime, right to protection from torture, violence, other brutal or degrading treatment or punishment), as well as compliance with the international obligations taken by Russia (participating in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the UN Convention Against Torture, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, etc.). That is why we are sure that our activity is performed in full compliance with the existing trends of the state policy».