Judge of Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court Irina Shkinina partially sustained the claim of Nizhny Novgorod citizen Anton Golovko on compensation for the moral damage inflicted to him by tortures in the police department. The court considered the compensation in the amount of three hundred thousand rubles indicated in the claim to be overrated and adjudged to the victim only fifty thousand rubles. Lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture representing the interests of Mr Golovko do not agree with this verdict of the court and are going to appeal.
Let us remind you that on 9 September 2015 Anton Golovko from the Sormovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod applied to the Committee for Prevention of Torture for legal assistance. According to him, on 23 March 2012 he was tortured by the police officers of Police Department No.8 in order to make him confess of a theft from a car: police officers beat him up, put a gas mask on his face, choked him and hang him up. Golovko was forced to sign a full confession which by that time had already been written for him by one of the police officers; however, no criminal case was opened against Anton.
Instead the investigative authorities opened a criminal case based on the fact of torture. It should be pointed out that the officers of the Directorate of Internal Security of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of the Interior of Russia for the Nizhny Novgorod region seized a number of material objects from the office of the suspected police officers, including gas masks, nunchucks, ropes.
On the same year of 2012 the criminal case was sent to the district court. The defendants and their defense team tried to topple the case by different means – once the judge had to return the case for the additional investigation. Then Anton Golovko applied to human rights defenders for legal assistance, and they started to represent his interests in court.
On 30 May 2016, judge of the Sormovskiy District Court of Nizhny Novgorod Tatyana Sineva pronounced a verdict with regard to two former police officers of Police Department No.8 of the Sormovskiy District Sergey Baranov and Sergey Batmanov. They were declared guilty of crime under items «а», «b» part 3 Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation («Exceeding official powers using violence and special equipment»). Baranov was sentenced to 4 years of prison term, Batmanov – to 3.5 years. The court declared the punishment to be a conditional one.
After the verdict entered into legal force the lawyers of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture representing the interests of Anton Golovko, applied to the court with the claim to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation regarding the compensation of the moral damage inflicted to Mr Golovko via criminal actions of the former policemen.
Yesterday, on 13 October 2016 judge of Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court Irina Shkinina partially sustained the claims and adjudged fifty thousand rubles to the victim.
“I will remind you that the court that found the former policemen guilty of tortures, established that the officer of the police were beating Anton, put a gas mask on him shutting off the air and hung him up in the tied up state. He agreed to incriminate himself only when the law enforcement officers connected the wires of the military field telephone to his fingers and promised him unbearable tortures with electric current, – pointed out lawyer of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Albert Kuznetsov. – That is why we certainly disagree with the amount of the compensation adjudged to the victim of tortures, and consider it to be disproportionate to the degree of the suffering that he endured, and we are going to appeal against this verdict of the court.”