On 27 February 2007 at 10.00 the Lazarevsky District Court of Sochi City will hold a preliminary trial under the criminal case against the group of officers of the special police forces (OMON) of Sochi City charged with abuse of official power with coercion in respect of a large group of peaceful citizens, including minors, who had been violently beaten by the OMON officers in July 2006 during the “mopping-up” operations in the youth recreation camp “Druzhba” situated in settlement Makops, Lazarevsky District.

You may remember that in July 2006, after the OMON operations in the camp, the Interregional Organization Mothers for the Protection of Rights of Suspects, Prisoners and Convicts (Krasnodar) requested the NN Committee Against Torture to help it in investigation of the events. And the human rights defenders have conducted a public investigation into the events. For this purpose a combined mobile group, composed of representatives from the Interregional Organization Mothers for the Protection of Rights of Suspects, Prisoners and Convicts (Krasnodar), the Committee Against Torture (Nizhny Novgorod), the Public Verdict Foundation (Moscow) and the Yoshkar-Ola City Organization “Man and Law”, arrived in Sochi. The group was engaged in establishing facts legally relevant to the case.

At the beginning of February the Krasnodar Regional Prosecutor’s Office referred to court the criminal case against 8 police officers, which will appear on the dock.

A lawyer of the NN Committee Against Torture will be representing the victims during the trial.