The criminal case with regard to two police officers from Khasavyurt, accused of applying tortures to force a local citizen to confess of a rape of an underage neighbor girl, is transferred to be investigated at the republican level. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of the victim, hope that the case will be brought to trial shortly.
As we have previously reported, a citizen of Mutsalaul settlement of the Republic of Dagestan Musa Aliyev applied for legal assistance to the Committee Against Torture on 25 October 2019. He told human rights defenders that on 6 September the police officers took him to the building of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District, allegedly, for providing evidence as a witness with regard to the murder committed in the settlement a few months ago in neighboring settlement. Aliyev remembers that he was taken to the room on the second floor and there two police officers started to beat him up: Deputy of the Head of Criminal Investigations of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District Ramazan Suleymanov and criminal investigations officer Yusoup Magomedov.
According to Aliyev, these police officers hit his feet, back and face, as well as made him stand near the wall with spread legs (put him on “spreader”) for over an hour in order to force confession of the rape of an underage neighbor girl.
Aliyev refused to provide false confessions and in the evening of the same day he was released home without drawing up any procedural documents or registration in the manual. Musa applied to the Khasavyurt City Hospital for medical assistance. Later on, the expert diagnosed Aliyev with brain concussion and contusion of soft tissues of the parietofrontal area, which inflicted a mild damage to health and were caused by the impact of a solid blunt object.
On 10 October, based on Musa Aliyev’s applying to the medical institution, the Khasavyurt Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Republic of Dagestan initiated a criminal case under Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“abuse of office using violence”) with regard to police officers Suleymanov and Magomedov, and Aliyev was declared a victim.
At the present time the accused police officers are under custody at the Pre-Trial Detention Facility.
On 17 February 2020, Acting Head of Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Dagestan Republic Oleg Potanin ordered to withdraw the Musa Aliyev’s torture case from the proceedings of the Khasayurt Interdistrict Investigative Department and hand it over for further examination to the third department for major cases investigation of the republican investigative department. According to the ruling, it is done because “preliminary investigation of the criminal case is rather difficult as a significant amount of work must be done with this respect”, as well as “aiming a complete and objective investigation”.
Today, human rights defenders received a copy of this ruling.
“In general, we were satisfied with the investigation progress in the Khasavyurt Interdistrict Investigative Department and were preparing for submitting the case to court, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Abubakar Yangulbayev, representing the interests of victim Musa Aliyev, comments. – Now we need to familiarize with the number of medical expert examinations and get acquainted with a new investigator. We hope that in the Republican Investigative Department the criminal case will not get stuck and, finally, will be sent to court for further examination”.