Judge of Yoshkar-Ola City Court of the Republic of Mariy El Eduard Kadulin declared the refusal to initial a criminal case on the ground of Vasul Askerov’s application, where he accused the policeman in using illegal force, to be legal. The Court agreed with the opinion of the Investigation Committee which believes that the actions of the police officer did not involve elements of crime, and Vasul broke his nose himself. The lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture appealed against the verdict of the Court.
(Vusal Askerov)
The story goes like this. Vusal Askerov from Yoshkar-Ola applied to the Committee for Prevention of Torture for legal assistance.
As Vusal told the human rights defenders, on the night from 19 to 20 February he dropped in a cafe-grill bar with some friends of his to buy cigarettes. However, this routine action ended up in a conflict. «When we entered the shop a cashier refused to serve us without explaining the reasons. After several attempts to attract her attention I broke a glass fish from the shop-window», – Vusal described the incident.
After that, according to Askerov, the shop assistant called for private enterprise security officers who came to scene of event and told the group of young men to wait till the police arrive.
«When the police officers arrived and entered the shop they immediately started to behave very rudely, none of them introduced themselves or showed their police IDs. One of the officers came up to me and asked: «Is it you who is the most arrogant here?», after that he pulled my arm behind my back and brought me out from the shop», – Askerov describes what was going on. Then, according to Vusal, the police officer brought him out in the street, faceplanted and handcuffed him, after that kicked him in the face so violently that Vusal lost consciousness for some time.
Then Vusal was delivered to city police department No.2. The ambulance was called there, too, and the medics diagnosed that Vusal had a nose fracture. As Ascerov recalls, the doctors wanted to take him away with them due to suspected craniocerebral injury, however, the police officers did not let them do it (later, in the framework of the pre-investigative check a forensic medical examination established a nose bones fracture with displacement of the fragments upwards).
«I was just standing in the police department with a broken nose for several hours, no one told me what I was beaten up for. After some time I managed to call to the Prosecutor’s Office and inform them about the situation. When a Prosecutor’s Office representative came over together with the investigator of the Internal Security Department of the Ministry of the Interior, I was provided with a report on administrative violation in the form of insubordination to the police officers, I was questioned about the incident and released», – Askerov said.
On the same day, 20 February, Vusal submitted a crime report to the investigative department for Yoshkar-Ola city of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Mary El, as well as to the human rights defenders of the Committee for Prevention of Torture for legal assistance.
In the course of checking the facts reported by Askerov the Investigation Committee investigator issued three refusals to initiate a criminal case which were appealed by the human rights defenders and were acknowledged to be illegal.
The fourth “refusal” was appealed by the representatives of Askerov in Yoshkar-Ola City Court which on 14 October this year declared the conclusion of the investigator that Askerov had broken his nose himself to be reasonable, and the verdict to refuse to initiate a criminal case was acknowledged to be legal.
“Askerov could harm himself due to his uncontrolled and aggressive conduct caused by alcohol” –judge Kadulin points out in his ruling referring to the materials of the checking conducted by the Investigation Committee and the Ministry of Interior. However, the investigation authorities have not established yet when and how Askerov allegedly had broken his nose, – lawyer of the Committee against Torture Dmitry Yalikov, representing the interests of Vasul Askerov, emphasizes. – Certainly, we cannot acknowledge such checking with such unobvious conclusions to be complete or recognize the declared reading to be legal, so we are going to appeal against the verdict of judge Kadulin at a higher instance.”