Yesterday, on 8 December 2015 lawyers of the Moscow branch of INGO «The Committee for Prevention of Torture» applied to the Chief Investigatory Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia for Moscow with crime reports. In the opinion of human rights defenders the actions of the investigators whom the citizens applied with complaints about the illegal police violence, amount to crime under Article 293 of the Russian Criminal Procedural Code («Neglect of duty»).
As we have already reported, lawyers of the Moscow branch of INGO «The Committee for Prevention of Torture» faced with several flagrant cases of the Investigative Committee’s illegal refusals to perform the check of complaints about the police violence applied against citizens. This came to such a pitch that the investigators defiantly ignored both the Prosecutor’s Office arguments and the judicial instances rulings.
Yesterday four crime reports were submitted which contained information about numerous violations in the investigative departments work.
An alarming tendency is developing in the Moscow region, according to human rights defenders from the Committee for Prevention of Torture – applicants’ complaints to the Investigative Committee with regards to illegal police violence are redirected by investigators, in violation of law, to the police structural subdivisions in order to conduct agency checks.
«Investigators used different ways to avoid dealing with the applications of the citizens who complained about the use of physical force by the police officers against them: such applications were forwarded to the police, redirected to other investigative departments or the check of these applications was refused. In every case, in our opinion, the authorities of the Investigative Committee of Russia committed not only disciplinary violations but criminal acts, – lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Sergey Babinets comments. – In addition to the application addressed to the Investigative Committee of Russia we submitted similar complaints to the Prosecutor’s Office of Moscow, as well».