Today, on 24 October 2018, the Leninsky District Court of Orenburg collected ten thousand rubles from the Investigative Committee of Russia for the benefit of Vladimir Arkhipov from Orenburg for seven years of red tape during checking of his complaint about the police battery. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of Arkhipov, will appeal against this ruling.
According to Vladimir, at night on August 11-12, 2011 he was stopped by the traffic police. Vladimir came out of the car and produced his documents to the officer. The police two times subjected him to the breath alcohol test and told him that he was drunk without showing the results of the test. After that the police proposed that Vladimir should call someone who could help him to solve the problem. Vladimir stated that he was sober and expressed his readiness to pass a blood test. Apparently, the police was not satisfied with the answer. All of a sudden one of the officers hit Vladimir in the temple with his fist.
After that Vladimir was ordered to get into the police car and pass the test again in presence of attesting witnesses. Then the police let him out. Arkhipov got into his own car and shut the doors. One of the officers demanded that the driver should open the doors and get out. Vladimir refused to do so because he was afraid that they would beat him again. One of the officers opened the trunk door, crushed the rear seats, got inside the car and started choking Vladimir. While Arkhipov was trying to free himself, another policeman opened the door and started applying an electric shocker to him. At the same time, other traffic policemen were hitting him in the head and trunk. The last blow which made Vladimir faint was in the nose.
When Vladimir came to himself he saw that his nose was broken and his T-shirt and jeans were smeared with blood. The police were standing nearby. Vladimir asked them to call an ambulance because he suffered from incoagulability and could die of blood loss. The police noticed that the nose bleeding did not cease and threw him a cell phone. Vladimir called an ambulance which immediately took him to hospital.
The following morning Arkhipov was examined by a forensic-medical expert. The same day he was hospitalized for 10 days.
Arkhipov has provided human rights defenders with the medical documents confirming his injuries: a record stating that he has abrasions and contusions, an excerpt from his clinical record describing his injuries – a brain concussion, contusions of head and face soft tissues, as well as a record stating that Vladimir has burns and traces of electrocution on the body.
No criminal case was initiated based on Vladimir Arkhipov’s complaint, and for several years already the investigative body has been performing the check, in the course of which the investigators over and over again pass illegal rulings refusing to initiate criminal proceedings, which are quashed after the complaints of the lawyers with the Committee Against Torture. At the present moment fourteen of such rulings were issued, and another check is ongoing with regard to Arkhipov’s complaint on battery.
In the course of the public investigation based on Arkhipov’s application, human rights defenders learned that the investigators lost his clinical record, which is crucial for conducting expert medical examination in order to establish the degree of damage inflicted to Vladimir. Later on the fact of the loss was confirmed as a result of pre-investigative and agency check.
Due to reluctance of the investigative authorities to perform effective investigation based on Arkhipov’s complaint against torture, in 2013 lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted a complaint on his behalf to the European Court of Human Rights.
On 5 July 2018 the complaint was communicated.
On 16 August of this year, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture applied a lawsuit in the interests of Vladimir Arkhipov to the Investigative Committee on compensation for moral damage inflicted by inefficient investigation.
Today, judge of the Leninsky District Court of Orenburg, Artem Kirichenko partially satisfied the claims under the lawsuit, having awarded to Arkhipov ten thousand rubles out of the claimed three hundred eighty five thousand.
“We are not satisfied with the amount of the awarded compensation and will appeal against this ruling. However, the fact that the court took the side of the citizen from Orenburg, in whose case the Investigative Committee cannot pass a legal ruling for seven years, we consider this positive”, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Timur Rakhmatulin comments.