(Evgeny Dydychkin)
The decision of the Yoshkar-Ola City Court ruling dismissed the claim for compensation of moral damage to Evgeny Dydychkin, inflicted to him by inefficient check of his complaint of having been beaten up by the police. In the court’s opinion, nine unlawful refusals to initiate criminal proceedings and the pre-investigation check, extended from ten days to two and a half years, do not violate the rights of the applicant and do not lead to compensation for moral damage. Lawyers of the Committee for Prevention of Torture, representing the interests of Dydychkin, will appeal against this court ruling. In the nearest future they also plan to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.
This story started back in 2013, when Evgeny Dydychkin and Mikhail Maltsev from Yoshkar-Ola applied to the Mary El branch of INGO «The Committee Against Torture». They told the human right defenders that on 14 January of the same year they were beaten up by the Road Control Service police officers near local bar called «Bogema». According to the applicants, the incident was caused by self-made snowmobile of Evgeny, on which the two friends came to the bar – the law-enforcement officers suspected that the vehicle was stolen. As Evgeny recalls, he passed out twice during the battery. His friend was also beaten up; he asked to stop using physical violence.
After the incident near the bar the two men were taken to Police Department No.1 where reports on committing administrative offense, expressed in insubordination to the police officers, were drawn up. On the next day Evgeny and Mikhail registered numerous bodily injuries at the medical institution, and applied to the investigative bodies with a crime report.
A highly inefficient check of this fact was performed by the investigative department for Yoshkar-Ola city of the Investigative Committee of the RF for the Republic of Mary El, which resulted in refusal to initiate criminal proceedings. Since the investigator did not even questioned the applicants, did not establish and question the people who were in the bar at that moment, did not assign additional medical forensic examination and failed to perform a number of other checking activities, human rights defenders, representing the interests of the applicants, successfully insisted that this unlawful refusal was declared illegal and reversed.
However, during the following two years the investigators issued eight more refusals to initiate criminal proceedings, which subsequently were also declared illegal.
«For all this time the investigators never conducted a thorough check, did not perform the full scope all the instructions of the Prosecutor’s Office with regard to conducting specific checking activities. As a result the possibility to obtain certain evidence is lost beyond retrieve, and performing certain checking activities lost any sense completely, – lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Dmitry Yalikov emphasizes. – On 12 January of this year another refusal was issued, in its essence it is similar to the previous ones. It took us over six months to finally have a look at this ruling, and now we are going to appeal against it».
Considering the check of Evgeny Dydychkin to be obvious example of red tape, which led to violation of his rights, human rights defenders filed a claim in court seeking compensation for moral damage. However, the court did not share the opinion of lawyers of the Committee for Prevention of Torture and dismissed this claim.
«We were disappointed by the position of the Yoshkar-Ola City Court which dismissed the plaintiff’s claim for compensation of moral damage inflicted to him by illegal actions of the officials. After we receive the reasons for such judgment we shall definitely appeal against it. We also intend to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights», – lawyer of the Committee for Prevention of Torture Dmitry Yalikov comments.