Today Tatyana Potyaeva, Human Rights Ombudsman in Moscow met the lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture. The decision was taken on exchanging information and coordination of joint work in the field of citizens’ complaints with regard to applying violence by representatives of the law-enforcement agencies.

(Photo: Tatyana Potyaeva, Human Rights Ombudsman in Moscow, and lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Dmitry Piskunov and Sergey Babinets)

“We have been planning the meeting with Tatyana Alexandrovna for a long time, and we are glad that it had finally took place, – head of Moscow branch of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Sergey Babinets comments. – The Ombudsman administration has received complaints with regard to violations committed in the course of the interrogation and preliminary investigation, including the illegal methods of influence by the law-enforcement officers. The ombudsman responds to these complaints sending the inquiries to the competent authorities, but she cannot provide a full legal support. Due to this fact we expressed our readiness to provide legal assistance to the applicants with relation to the complaints of that sort and to conduct our own public investigation.”

The Committee, in its turn, has no administrative resources that the administration of the Human Rights Ombudsman has. So the cooperation is quite important for providing the safety of the applicants complaining of tortures, and for more efficient communication with the representatives of the state authorities.

“We are very glad that despite the busy working schedule and duty trips, Tatyana Alexandrovna found some time to speak to us, – lawyer of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Anastasiya Garina reported. – It also seems important to me that our meeting was not just “an exchange of niceties”, we discussed the specifics, real cases and proceeded with fulfillment of our agreements.”