Three times the Investigative Committee investigators refused to initiate criminal proceedings with regard to the application of Aleksey Kondrashov from Maly Surmet settlement of the Orenburg region – according to him, in the August of last year, the police officers beat him up, broke his rib and inflicted a brain concussion. Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture, representing the interests of the victim, appealed against the last “refusal” of the investigator and will insist on initiating criminal proceedings.

On 4 September 2019, Aleksey Kondrashov from Maly Surmet settlement of the Orenburg region applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal assistance. According to him, on 29 August 2019, he and his son Sergey were busy putting hay in the trailer of his tractor. At about 10 a.m., six people in civilian clothes drove to their house – three of them got over the fence, while three more, according to Aleksey, got inside the house.

The men introduced themselves as police officers and told the head of the family that they were looking for his second son Yury on suspicion of robbery. Kondrashov-the elder replied that he did not know anything about Yury’s whereabouts and started to express his indignance at the police officers’ abuse of power, who entered the house without the court ruling and without asking the house owners for permission. At Aleksey’s demand, the second group of the police officers left the house and came outside, after that the head of the family went to the tractor which he did not have the time to shut down due to the visit of law-enforcement.

“I was walking towards the tractor. I did not reach it at the moment when three police officers hurried after me like vultures from my back. They brought me on the ground face down, and started to hit and kick my body and head and attempted to twist my hands behind my back. They wanted to tie my hands up with a belt. They also hit my neck, shoulders… One of them hit me painfully with his knee at my back “, – Aleksey Kondrashov recalls.

According to Aleksey, physical force was also applied against his son Sergey.

At this time Aleksey’s wife Klavdiya returned home, who attempted to interfere and hamper the police officer’s tying her son up – according to her, she was pushed rudely aside several times and called names.

The police officers tied Aleksey and Sergey’s arms with belts, put both of them in the vehicle and took them to the police department.

From the police department they were taken to hospital where both were tested for alcohol intoxication (as the tests showed, both were sober). The relatives picked the Kondrashov father and son from the police department.

On the next day, Aleksey Kondrashov applied to hospital. He was diagnosed with numerous injuries: bruises and hematomas on his face and head, closed craniocerebral injury, brain concussion, broken tenth rib on the right near the scapulocostal line.

Later on, the medical forensic specialist indicated in his conclusion that Aleksey Kondrashov’s bodily injuries might have been developed under the circumstances on which he informed initially. The specialist indicated that the brain concussion, hypodermic hematoma of the left temporal region, paraorbital hematoma on the left, bruise on the forehead developed from no less than three impact traumatic forces, and the closed fracture of the tenth rib on the right developed from, at least, one impact traumatic force at the point of fracture.

On 30 August, Aleksey Kondrashov applied to the Prosecutor’s Office with a complaint against the police officers. It was forwarded to the Abdulinsky Interdistrict Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Orenburg region.

The police officers also applied to the Investigative Committee. They stated that they did not beat the Kondrashov father and son, but applied physical force against them legally because Segey threatened them with hay fork and Aleksey, at first, threatened them with a spanner, and later hit one of the law-enforcement officers with it.

Investigator Ilyas Salikov dealt with investigation of both versions of events. On 29 September, he refused to initiate criminal proceedings, considering the behavior of the police officers, as well as the Kondrashov father and son’s behavior, to be legal.

On 14 October, head of the Investigative Department Sergey Kornilov quashed the ruling of investigator Salikov, however, the latter, having failed to perform a single checking activity, once again refused to initiate criminal proceedings.

It repeated once again, and on 1 December, investigator Salikov refused to initiate criminal proceedings for the third time.

On 15 April 2020, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture applied to the head of the Investigative Department demanding to quash the last refusal as illegal.

“In our complaint we pointed out that investigator Salikov did not resolve numerous controversies in the testimony of the Kondrashov father and son, on the one hand, and the police officers, on the other hand. To establish the full picture of the incident it is necessary, at least, to perform additional questioning of Kondrashov at the place of incident with video recording, as well as a situational and medical and criminological expert examination, repeated questioning of the police officers, who elude from describing how they applied physical force, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Timur Rakhmatulin comments. – We shall insist that these checking activities are performed and the criminal case is opened for more complete and effective investigation of Kondrashov’s complaint about the police battery”.