Today the Oktyabrsky city court of Bashkiria has found another refusal to instigate criminal proceedings upon the fact of Mikhail Timin’s death in the remand prison of the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs unlawful. The court has agreed with the reasoning of lawyers from the Bashkirian representation of the Committee Against Torture and obliged investigative authorities to conduct an additional, more thorough check of the incident.
We would like to remind you that Mikhail Timin was detained on 10 March 2004. While he was in the remand prison, his condition aggravated. According to his cell mates, he had fits accompanied by convulsions. Due to requests of inmates, the police called in an ambulance. The doctor examined Mr. Timin and told the policemen that he should be urgently put in hospital. However, the policemen left the man in the detention facility. But fits were recurrent with an increasing frequency and the police had to take Timin to hospital where he was given several injections, after that the detainee was driven back to the remand prison.
Some hours later the patient’s condition aggravated further and the police again called in an ambulance. Doctors diagnosed Timin with epilepsy and recommended a prompt visit to a specialist. Meanwhile, Timin still had fits and the police placed him in a solitary cell to spare themselves further trouble.
In the early morning on 13 March 2004 Mr. Timin died of a heart failure.
The official investigation into Timin’s death was ineffective. For 7 years the investigative authorities kept on issuing refusals to instigate criminal proceedings which were found unlawful following ICAT’s appeals.
At the end of 2009 Mikhail’s sister – Olga Korsakova – applied to the ECtHR with the help of the Committee Against Torture. At present the application is pending trial. It must be noted that the European Court will evaluate not only the circumstances of Timin’s death, but also the quality of the investigation carried out by the Russian Investigative Committee.
Now the investigative authorities will have to check the facts of Mikhail Timin’s death anew.