The NN Committee Against Torture has submitted additional case comments under the application “Lisina v. Russia” to the European Court of Human Rights. You may remember that the European Court has declared the complaint of Elena Lisina of torture and lack of effective investigation admissible. Therefore we expect the complaint to be considered on the merits in 2007.   

  Representatives of the applicant have submitted additional case comments in accordance with the Court’s procedure to additionally substantiate the claims. In the observations they underlined the fact that Ms. Lisina had been subjected to torture and cruel treatment and it had been proved in accordance with the standard of proof applied by the European Court of Human Rights.

   Representatives of Ms. Lisina has also underlined that the investigation of the criminal case for the period from June 2005 till present has been lacking effectiveness.

   As you may know, after many years which had passed since the violent crime committed by prosecution officials in respect of Elena Lisina, the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court of Russia took certain measures to ensure the investigation of the criminal case initiated on Ms. Lisina’s application, however till present days these measures have not resulted in reopening the proceedings under the case.

   Representatives of the applicant have also emphasized that torture, cruel treatment and rape exerted on Ms. Lisina resulted in a most painful traumatic shock. The shock was aggravated by the age of the applicant (at that moment she was only 19 years old) and by the fact that she had been being subjected to torture and cruel treatment for 9 hours on end.

Six years later the inaction of the prosecution service and lack of accountability for the offenders hurts her even more.