Photo: Roman Chikviladze and Valiko Baygulov
The Orenburg Regional Court lightened the verdict of two Orenburg police officers Sergey Pavlov and Rinat Arslambayev who tortured brothers Valiko Baygulov and Roman Chikviladze for the sake of a confession of a theft of five thousand rubles. This was reported by lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Albina Mudarisova.
Previously, the Saraktashsky District Court of the Orenburg region declared the police officers to be guilty of abuse of office using violence and special equipment (items “a”, “b” of Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). However, today, the court of the appellate instance excluded the item on applying special equipment from the indictment.
At first, the District Court sentenced Pavlov to three and a half years of standard regime penal colony, Arslambayev– to two years. Now the regional court lightened the sentence, decreasing it by two months for each. The court took into account departmental awards and involvement in active service, as well as the mitigating circumstances: Pavlov has a small kid, a pregnant wife and his mother with assigned category of disability, who depend on him, and Arslambayev’s mother is gravely ill.
In addition, the period of prohibition for Pavlov and Arslambayev to take up government positions was decreased down to two years and four months and one year and ten months, accordingly. The decision to strip them off the ranks for discrediting the Ministry of the Interior remained in force.
The court established that in the night of 11 August 2019 Pavlov was applying electricity to the victims’ groin area, and Arslambayev was holding the chair to which the apprehended were tied to. That was the method which the police officers applied to force the victims to confess of a theft of five thousand roubles from their father. The brothers claimed they did not take the money, but, having yielded to torture, Roman took the blame on himself.
After that incident, Roman did not leave his home for three days, but in the end, turned to a doctor’s help. The latter informed the police about his patient’s traumas. “Immediately the very same police officer who hit me with electric shocker came to the hospital and took away the medical documents that I received, – Roman describes. – After that he asked if I smoked, I replied negatively, and then he bought two cake cheeses for me and gave me a lift home”.
After Chikviladze applied to the Committee Against Torture, human rights defenders helped him to register the bodily injuries on the same day at the Bureau of Forensic Medical expert examination in Orenburg, which found the electric markings in the area of thighs and external sex organs, which were generated as a result of repeated impact of electricity.
The defendants did not plead guilty.
“Now the verdict came into legal force and we shall be submitting lawsuits seeking for compensation of the victims’ morale damage and will be insisting on fair payments, — lawyer Albina Mudarisova explained. — In addition, we shall apply to the superiors of the Ministry of the Interior with a request to communicate the information on the verdict coming into legal force to the staff in order to prevent the practice of torture in the Orenburg region”.