Photo: Sergey Lyapin. He claims that police officers from the Volodarskiy district tortured him with electricity.
Yesterday, on July 9, 2008, the Committee against Torture received an application from Mr. Sergey Lyapin from Nizhny Novgorod. He asks the Committee to render him legal aid and conduct a public investigation of the fact of his battery on April 25, 2008 by the Volodarskiy district Department of Internal Affairs staff. It should be mentioned that earlier Mr. Lyapin had applied to the Prosecutor’s office but it refused to instigate a criminal case.
According to Sergey, during the night of the 24th – 25th of April he was collecting scrap metal near one of garage blocks of Ilyinskoye of the Volodarskiy district of Nizhny Novgorod region. All of a sudden he was detained by officers from the Volodarskiy police department, as he was told, “on suspicion of committing thefts”.
Mr. Lyapin was taken to the police station and led to some room where two detective officers tied him up with a tow-line and started torturing him with electricity. They fastened two wires to Mr.Lyapin’s small fingers and using a device looking like a portable telephone set started to feed electricity to the wires. The detective officers tried to increase the effect of current by pouring water on the detainee. The tortures lasted till the morning. Because of electric shock Sergey became unconscious several times, and he has got burns on his hands. Moreover, not only his small fingers got burnt because, but also his wrists and hands because the wires fell down several times. Mr. Lyapin’s hands got swollen.
After several hours of torturing him with electricity the police took Mr. Lyapin to a room where there were 6 people. Each person came up to him asking questions about circumstances of different criminal cases. One of them, who had introduced himself as “madder beret”, kicked the man on the solar plexus and hit him on the ribs on the left side.
Later the detainee was subject to the investigation formalities and the judge of the peace sentenced Sergey to 5 days of administrative arrest “for disobeying the police”, after that he was sent to a special detention centre to serve his sentence.
Next day Mr. Lyapin grew worse and he was taken in an ambulance right from his cell first to a hospital in Dzerzhinsk and then to the Avtozavodskiy district trauma station in Nizhny Novgorod, and then to hospital 40. There he was staying from April 26 till May 7. Mr.Lyapin’s diagnosis was – concussion, chest contusion, thermal burns on both hands. After getting out of hospital Mr.Lyapin continued the treatment as an out-patient.
At the present moment the Investigation department of the Committee against Torture is checking Sergey Lyapin’s application.