The European Court of Human Rights awarded former police officers Aslandek Daurbekov and Alikhan Akhmedov who suffered from tortured by their colleagues, with 26 000 and 25 700 euros, correspondingly. The court acknowledged that they were subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment which violates Article 3 of the Convention of Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
According to Akhmedov, he was subjected to torture in 2007, when he was working in the criminal investigations and investigated a case where Said-Emin Mazayev, a distant relative of Alikhan Tsakayev, Head of Special Police Force (OMON) with the Ministry of the Interior for the Chechen Republic, was a suspect. Akhmedov and his colleague Imran Arsamerzuyev were with the use of violence and fire weapons by the Chechen OMON officers, taken to the Chechen OMON base and subjected to long and brutal torture.
Akhmedov recalled how the police officers tied his hands behind his back with a rope, put a cloth into his mouth. Then they hitched that very rope over a bough and started pulling it so that he found myself hanging in the air. After that all OMON officers started beating Alikhan with arms and legs all over his body. It lasted about three hours, during which Akhmedov fainted several times and then the OMON officers would pour cold water on him. Twice they put out his cigarettes against his neck.
Subsequently, Akhmedov and his colleague, were found guilty of abuse of office using violence against Said-Emin Mazayev. Alikhan was sentenced to three years’ conditional term.
The Investigative Committee with the regional Prosecutor’s Office initiated criminal proceedings based on a fact of applying violence against Akhmedov and Arsamerzuyev, but subsequently this case was dismissed at least 19 times. At the same time, the investigators did not perform key investigative activities. Due to the red tape, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted a lawsuit seeking to compensate morale damage inflicted to Akhmedov, and the court evaluated it at 15 thousand roubles.
The second applicant of the Committee Against Torture, on whose application the European Court started the communication process, is Aslanbek Daurbekov.
Aslanbek, who in 2010 worked as district police officer in Shaami-Yurt village, told that in 2010 he was tortured in the Achkhoy-Martan District Police Department by the police officers. ,
In his explanation, Daurbekov told that at first his colleagues with the Ministry of the Interior demanded that he confessed of raping a woman, but then they changed their mind and started to demand confessions concerning robbery of a woman from Grozny.
According to Aslanbek, he did not agree to incriminate oneself, due to this the police officers were beating him up the whole day, and did not give any food or drink, and on the next day they continued the battery and started to threaten with rape. After that he agreed to confess of robbery.
According to Daurbekov, in a few days he dismissed his confessions and he was taken from the temporary detention facility back to the Achkhoy-Martan District Police Department – there he was tortured being hung on the rod, and the police officers demanded that he confessed of a new crime: robbery with violence of two gas filling stations.