(Photo: Nizami Gasanov and Elshan Zamanov)
The Avtozavodskiy District Court of Nizhny Novgorod continues examining the criminal case against six police officers of Avtozavodsky District Police Department who are charged with several criminal episodes of exceeding official powers and one criminal episode of home invasion.
As we have previously reported, on March 27, 2012 the Nizhny Novgorod office of the Committee Against Torture received applications from Nizami Gasanov and Elshan Zamanov alleging they were subjected to unlawful violence by the police officers of Police Department no. 1 of Nizhny Novgorod Department of Interior. It took the investigators of the Investigative Committee over two years to take it to court.
«Examination of the criminal case in court is going on for about a year. Case materials amount to over forty volumes. About fifty witnesses were declared from both sides, out of them about a half have been questioned so far, – tells lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Dmitry Utoukin, representing the interests of the victims. – In the course of the last court session the police officers who took part in apprehension and transportation of Zamanov and Gasanov to the police department were questioned».
As Utoukin explained, the Patrol-Guard Service police officer failed to answer to the court which legal norm regulates the transportation of the detained, and who exactly gave him the order for Gasanov and Zamanov transportation to the police department. The police officer who escorted the detained to the police department and then was guarding them in the department, failed to recall who exactly gave him the order to go to the incident scene and who was in charge of the victims’ apprehension.
«The court proceedings are going on in a rather tense manner. The defendants talk with the victims as if they were in for interrogation in their office. Judge Aleksandr Pakhomov has to constantly make observations to the police officers on the dock, since they were breaking the silence. It’s worth noting that the defense team declared head of regional Department of Interior Ivan Shayev as their witness», – emphasized Dmitriy Utoukin.
Next session is scheduled for 9 September 2015 at 9 hours 30 minutes.