Yesterday, on 27 July 2016, the Sormovskiy District Court of Nizhny Novgorod declared the investigator’s refusal to initiate criminal proceedings based on application of the couple that became victims of the police officers’ actions, to be illegal. Human rights defenders intend to insist on initiating criminal proceedings against the police officers and demand that a check is conducted with regards to the superiors of the investigative department who committed the violation of the law.
(photo: Lyubov Abramova, Dmitry Kamzolov)
As we have previously reported, in February 2014 Nizhny Novgorod Office of the Interregional NGO «Committee Against Torture» has received an application from Mr Dmitry Kamzolov and his partner Ms Lyubov Abramova. According to them, on 10 February, in their own flat, they were severely beaten by private security guards.
According to Lyubov Abramova, before the attack she had had a conflict with a woman who had parked her car on the lawn so that people could hardly walk by. The women had a fight, and Lyubov’s partner Mr Kamzolov stopped it. Then the driver threatened the couple with some problems, saying that her husband was a cop.
Lyubov and Dmitry state that at about 8 pm someone rang at their door. Lyubov opened it, and two police officers entered their flat. They neither introduced themselves nor explained the reason for the visit. They started shouting «where is your man!» Dmitry heard the noise and showed up near the door. Mr Kamzolov remembers an immediate blow in the face, so he had no time to say or understand anything, nor could he resist their actions. Then, according to the couple, the policemen were beating them with hands and rubber truncheons, and handcuffed them in the end. «They explained nothing», says Ms Abramova, «they were beating us silently, with smiles on their faces». After that Dmitry was brought to Police Department No 8. On the same day he was examined by a doctor in a local trauma center, who observed numerous bruises and abrasions. Ms Lyubov Abramova was as well examined and obtained a medical report.
In his ruling judge Ilya Varlamov pointed out that Deputy Head of the Investigative Department Mariya Chuvstvina, having conducted a check based on Lubov Abramova and Dmitry Kamzolov’s application, did not take into account the fact that the applicants had too many injuries. This circumstance contradicts to the explanations of the police officers who claimed that they applied force only to the level that would guarantee their safety.
In total the judge counted seven violations committed by the Deputy Head in the course of the crime report check.
The complaint of injured applicants Lubov Abramova and Dmitry Kamzolov, submitted to court on 27.06.2015 as provided for in Article 125 of the Criminal and Procedural Code of the RF, was being examined in court for exactly one year and one month. In total 20 court hearings were held based on this complaint.
However, such a long period of the complaint examination, which usually takes two or three hearings, is related not to the court actions but to the applicants’ intention to thoroughly examine the materials of the case. The judge satisfied all the motions of the applicants.
This case has a lot of interesting peculiarities. For example, a Chief Assistant Prosecutor of the Sormovskit District Mariya Kidalova was involved in the capacity of a witness in favor of the woman with a car. It is this circumstance that caused the transfer of supervision of this case from the Prosecutor’s Office of the Sormovskiy District to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Moscow region.
Unfortunately, representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Moscow region in the course of the judicial examination insisted that the ruling was legal and grounded.
However, the judge agreed to the applicants’ arguments and acknowledged that the check was conducted incompletely.
Lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Sergey Shounin commented on the court ruling: «I think that the superiors of the investigative department for the Sormovskiy District should draw most serious conclusions based on the results of the repeated quashing of the rulings, issued by his subordinated in the framework of this check. In the nearest future we intend to apply to the superiors of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for the Nizhny Novgorod region asking them to get the material of this check under their control, as well as consider subjecting the superiors of the Investigative Department for the Sormovskiy District of Nizhny Novgorod to disciplinary action».