Yesterday, on 27 October 2016, Moscow regional court upheld the guilty verdict of the court of first instance in respect of the three officers of the Police Criminal Investigations Department of Solnechnogorsky District Stanislav Deikun, Andrey Chernyshev and Vladimir Gordeyev, who were found guilty of beating a citizen of the Republic of Tadzhikistan Farrukh Urozov to death. As a result, Deikun and Chernyshev were sentenced to the prison term of seven years and four months each. And Gordeyev was sentenced to seven years and six months. The verdict came into effect. The lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture are intending to file a lawsuit presenting the interests of the brother of the deceased person asking for the compensation of the moral damage inflicted by the crime committed by the policemen.
(In the photo: Vladimir Gordeyev, Stanislav Deikun, Andrey Chernyshev)
(In the photo: Farrukh Urozov)
As we have previously reported, on 26 September a Moscow-area resident Ilkhom Alikhonov applied to the Committee Against Torture for legal support. He told the human rights defenders that in the evening of 17 September when he returned home his brother Farrukh Urozov was asleep. In ten minutes time several Patrol-and-Guard Service officers entered the house together with the brothers’ neighbor.
According to Ilkhom, having applied physical violence, the police officers woke up his brother, handcuffed him and took him to the police department. As Ilkhom learned later, Farrukh was detained upon suspicion of using violence against six-year-old daughter of their neighbor.
Ilkhom explained that after a while police officers came up to his house again and this time they took him together with his mate Firdavs Sattorov to the same police department. There Alikhonov heard the loud cries of his brother, who was in one of the rooms. For some time he even managed to see Farrukh through a cracked door: the brother was sitting on the floor with hands tied, a lot of bruises and scratches were clearly seen on his face, there was blood on the floor.
Early in the morning of 18 September Ilkhom and Firdavs were released from the police department. Several hours later they learned that Farrukh Urozov died.
According to the forensic medical examination Urozov’s body and limbs were hit over seventy five times. In the course of the battery twelve ribs were broken. Mr Urozov died of multiple traumas and strangulation.
Criminal case with regard to the fact of Urozov’s death was immediately initiated; one of the police officers was detained and arrested. In the course of investigation the involvement of two other Criminal Investigations Department officers in Urozov’s death was established: later on they were also arrested and put into the pre-trial detention facility.
On 19 January 2016 the Solnechnogorskiy City Court of the Moscow region started examination of the criminal case on its merits. Over thirty witnesses were interrogated, ten volumes of the criminal case and numerous expert examinations were studied in the course of the five-month court proceedings.
On 15 June this year the judge of the Solnechnogorskiy City Court of the Moscow region Stanislav Chepik brought in the verdict of guilty for three defendants. They were declared guilty of committing the crimes under part 4 Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Russia («inflicting grave bodily harm leading to the death by negligence») and items «а, b, c» of part 3 Article 286 of the Criminal Code of Russia («abuse of office using violence, weapons or special equipment, which inflicted grave consequences»). Deikun and Chernyshev are sentenced to seven years and four months of prison term, Gordeyev – to seven years and six months of prison term. The court made a ruling that they would serve their sentence in a maximum security penal colony.
The convicted persons did not agree with the verdict and appealed against it in the Moscow regional court.
Yesterday, on 27 October 2016, the court upheld the verdict of the court of first instance and the appeals of the convicted persons were not satisfied. The verdict came into legal force.
“Now nobody will ever know if Farrukh Urozov was guilty of that terrible crime that he was accused. The police officers who declared the guilty verdict and “carried it into effect” themselves made it impossible to find out the truth. But the court found that the policemen committed severe crimes not only against the person but also against the state where the court is in charge of declaring verdicts and another institution is responsible for executing the punishment, – comments lawyer of the Committee against Torture Sergey Babinets representing the interest of victim Ilkhom Allikhonov. – In the nearest future we are planning to file a lawsuit to the court for compensation of the moral damage inflicted to the brother of the deceased person by the criminal actions of the policemen.”