Lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Anastasia Garina applied to the Department of the Federal Bailiff Service with a complaint against the actions of the bailiff of the Chertanovskiy District Court of Moscow, who kept the audience out of the open court hearing. The audience failed to take part in the court hearing on assigning a judicial restraint for former Patrol-Guard Service officer Evgeniy Kharkov, who complained of ill-treatment by the Ministry of Interior Internal Security Department officers, and who himself became involved in a bribery case.
(Evgeniy Kharkov)
Evgeniy Kharkov applied to the Committee for Prevention of Torture for legal assistance in May 2016. Up until recently Evgeniy was a Patrol-Guard Service officer at the Chertanovo Yuzhnoye District Police Department of Moscow. However, in winter of this year he was dismissed from the Ministry of Interior and a criminal case was opened against him on suspicion of bribery and applying violence against one of the Ministry of Interior Internal Security Department officers. Evgeniy claims that he is innocent – on the contrary, it was the internal security «special agents» who beat him up and choked him during the apprehension.
Evgeniy has already three times applied to the Investigative Committee with a report of the crime committed against him by the internal security officers, but in almost half a year only received a response stating that the information conveyed by him will be reviewed in the framework of the criminal case, initiated… against him.
In his turn Kharkov started to actively collect the evidence of his innocence: applied to authorities of different levels, talked the colleagues into giving truthful testimony on the case and not to ignore the investigation, he also collected the documentation on his own. Evgeniy passed a psychophysiological study on polygraph lie detector, the results of which confirmed that the former police officer is not lying concerning the facts of applying illegal violence to him by the internal security officers.
On 24 June in the Chertanovskiy District Court of Moscow the court examined the investigator’s motion on taking Mr Kharkov into custody. Neither lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture or Mr Kharkov’s relatives managed to hear the legal grounds upon which Evgeniy, an officially married Moscovite with a registration, who does not even have an international passport, is taken to the pre-trial detention facility – they were simply kicked out of the court room. At first the bailiff informed that the court hearing will be held in a closed mode, and then he claimed that the court hearing is closed altogether.
«Unfortunately, such things are not new at the Chertanovskiy District Court of Moscow. On the internet, for example, one can find video when bailiffs are simply kicking the audience out of the courtroom. We consider this practice to be illegal, that is why we applied with a complaint to the Directorate of the Federal Bailiffs Service and to the Prosecutor’s Office, – lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Anastasia Garina says. – We also appealed against the response of Acting Deputy Head of the Chertanovskiy Investigative Department of the Investigative Directorate for the Southern Administrative District of the Chief Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the RF for Moscow Mr Plutalov, in which he informed that Kharkov’s complaint of applying illegal physical violence against him will be examined in the framework of the criminal case opened against him».