НАСТОЯЩИЙ МАТЕРИАЛ (ИНФОРМАЦИЯ) ПРОИЗВЕДЕН, РАСПРОСТРАНЕН И (ИЛИ) НАПРАВЛЕН ИНОСТРАННЫМ АГЕНТОМ «КОМАНДА ПРОТИВ ПЫТОК» ЛИБО КАСАЕТСЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННОГО АГЕНТА «КОМАНДА ПРОТИВ ПЫТОК» | 18+
In February 2023, police officers burst into Oleg Nosov’s house in the village of Gazyr (Krasnodar region). Oleg was taken to the police station, and his children, three and five years old, were left alone. The man claims that the police hung him up with a crowbar and beat him at the Tikhoretskiy district police station so that he would confess to the crime.
Oleg Nosov is currently being held in a pre-trial detention center on charges of metal theft (Article 158 of the Criminal Code). While in detention, he applied to the lawyers of the Crew Against Torture. Oleg indicated that on the night of 4 February, about 15 policemen from the criminal investigation units of the Tikhoretskiy, Vyselkovskiy and Krasnodar police stations came to his house. At this time, Mr. Nosov was at home with his two children, aged three and five. The man was taken to the police station, and the children were left alone, as their mother was in the hospital at that time with her youngest child. As Mr. Nosov’s wife, Alina, told the lawyers, a friend called her on the phone in the morning and asked: «What should I do with your children?». Alina found out that they were alone only at 8 am, so she immediately went home, leaving the third child in the hospital. Before her arrival, the neighbor had taken the children to their relatives. Alina also saw their dog wounded — allegedly, the pet had been shot with a pneumatic weapon during Mr. Nosov’s arrest.
As for Oleg, he was brought to the Tikhoretskiy district police station, taken to a cabinet on the third floor and, as Mr. Nosov claims, the policemen began demanding his confession about stealing the metal. According to Oleg’s recalls, he denied his guilt, and then one of the officers said: «Prepare water treatments.»
«The officers took me out into the corridor and threw me on the floor. They tied my arms and legs with tape and pulled the crowbar between the arms and the back of the knees. In this position, they dragged me to the end of the corridor and hung me on a crowbar between the safe and the bench, so I ended up upside down. That was so painful.»
Oleg indicates that after 20 minutes of excruciating pain, he confessed to the theft of the metal. In the morning, he was taken to the investigator, where Mr. Nosov stated that he had confessed to the crime under duress. After this, the policemen again took Oleg to the third floor. According to Mr. Nosov, the officer, who had previously beaten him, announced: «Didn’t you understand anything?”, and then he punched Oleg in the stomach area.
«I pulled out a box cutter from my pocket, which I previously had taken from the investigator’s table, and cut my left hand to stop the torture and humiliation. That act didn’t help, as I was immediately kicked in the face, I started bleeding, my face was smashed.»
Mr. Nosov recalls that the ill-treatment did not end there: that policeman continued to beat him and subsequently broke his nose. Oleg says that there was a lot of blood and it could have remained on the closet, sofa and floor in that cabinet.
The man refused to admit to the crime and then, as Oleg recalls, one of the policemen proposed to take him to the police station of the village of Vyselki. According to Oleg, having arrived at that police station, the officers took him to a shooting range and continued beating him there. Oleg could no longer endure that ill-treatment, so he agreed to sign a confession. A report on disobedience to the police was drawn up against Mr. Nosov (Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). Subsequently, relying on that report, the court sentenced Oleg to two days of administrative detention. After the court’s session, Mr. Nosov was taken to the Vyselkovskiy district hospital, where his hand was bandaged. The man told the medics about other injuries that he had inflicted them at home, as during the examination, a policeman was near Oleg, so Mr. Nosov was afraid that the officers would start beating him again.
Near the hospital, Oleg managed to meet his wife Alina, who succeeded in getting a photo of her husband in the police car. The photo shows that Mr. Nosov had abrasions on his face and a large hematoma under his left eye.
Currently, Mr. Nosov is in the pre-trial detention center no. 1 of Krasnodar. Oleg indicates that an investigator interviewed him regarding the complaint of torture and there was a medical examination, which confirmed a broken nose. The CAT lawyers learned that from 21 February (the date Oleg’s attorney filed a crime report to the prosecutor’s office) until now, the investigator has not completed the minimum amount of investigative steps that would have made it possible to clarify the circumstances of the incident, having refused to open a criminal case into Oleg’s allegations.
The lawyers of the Crew Against Lawyers state the following: «In Nosov’s story we hear about places of torture that our applicants had spoken about before. For instance, Viktor Krasnoborodko told us about the use of a crowbar. He was held in the same Tikhoretskiy police station. According to the man’s words, he was also hung with a crowbar there. The shooting range in Vyselki appears in the story described by Evgeniy Skidanov. Let us note that these victims never knew each other and could hardly know the details of ill-treatment of others.»
At present, the human rights defenders from the CAT are challenging the refusal to open a criminal case, having demanded that the investigator should carry out investigative actions that would make it possible to establish the circumstances of what had happened to Oleg Nosov.