Today, on 16 November 2019, the Khasavyurt District Court of the Republic of Dagestan took into custody Deputy Head of Criminal Investigations of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District Ramazan Suleymanov, who is accused of having forced a local citizen to confess of the rape of the underage neighbor girl. The court hearing took place at the Central City Hospital named after Askerkhanov, since one day before the planned court hearing on selecting the measure of restraint the defendant received a craniocerebral injury. Previously, the second participant of this case was also taken into custody – criminal investigations officer Yusoup Magomedov.
A citizen of Mutsalaul settlement of the Republic of Dagestan Musa Aliyev applied for legal assistance to the Committee Against Torture on 25 October of this year. He told human rights defenders that on 6 September the police officers took him to the building of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District, allegedly, for providing evidence as a witness with regard to the murder committed in the settlement a few months ago in neighboring settlement. Aliyev remembers that he was taken to the room on the second floor and there two police officers started to beat him up: Deputy of the Head of Criminal Investigations of the Department of the Interior of Russia for the Khasavyurt District Ramazan Suleymanov and criminal investigations officer Yusoup Magomedov.
According to Aliyev, these police officers hit his feet, back and face, as well as made him stand near the wall with spread legs (put him on “spreader”) for over an hour in order to force confession of the rape of an underage neighbor girl.
Aliyev refused to provide false confessions and in the evening of the same day he was released home without drawing up any procedural documents or registration in the manual. Musa applied to the Khasavyurt City Hospital for medical assistance. Later on, the expert diagnosed Aliyev with brain concussion and contusion of soft tissues of the parietofrontal area, which inflicted a mild damage to health and were caused by the impact of a solid blunt object.
On 10 October, based on Musa Aliyev’s applying to the medical institution, the Khasavyurt Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Republic of Dagestan initiated a criminal case under Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“abuse of office using violence”) with regard to police officers Suleymanov and Magomedov, and Aliyev was declared a victim.
Today, a visiting court hearing took place at the Central City Hospital, where Ramazan Suleymanov’s measure of restraint was changed from house arrest to taking into custody. The reason of that was that the defendant violated the house arrest mode: he did not reside at the location defined by the court, and, using his relatives, he also attempted to exert pressure on the victim so as the latter did not provide evidence against him.
Previously, on 12 November, the second participant of this case, Yusoup Magomedov, was also taken into custody.
Both defendants are facing from three to ten years of jail time.
“Torture cases with regard to police officers are very rare in Caucasus. Unfortunately, the law-enforcement system often cannot or would not investigate such cases, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Abubakar Yangulbayev, representing the interests of victim Musa Aliyev, comments. – Even less often the accused police officers are taken into custody to minimize the possibility of exerting pressure on the victims and their relatives – very often the measure of restraint is not selected for them at all, even if they don’t participate in the investigative activities at the request of the investigator. That is why we are certainly satisfied with the court ruling”.