Chairman of the Committee against Torture Igor Kalyapin requests Mr. Chayka to check the disastrous situation attributed to personnel shortage in the Dzerzhinsk Prosecutor’s Office.

   Today chairman of the Interregional Committee against Torture Igor Klayapin has sent an official address to the RF Prosecutor General, Mr. Chayka, to the Nizhny Novgorod regional Prosecutor, Mr. Maximenko, and to the Dzerzhinsk Prosecutor, Mr. Vasenkin, containing a request to check whether the number of staff members in the Dzerzhinsk Prosecutor’s Office is consistent with the existing system of justice.

The address was caused by problems arising from personnel shortage in the city prosecutor’s office. Thus, staff shortage leads to grave procedural violations. For example, under Sergey Lyapin’s case, the Dzerzhinsk Prosecutor’s Office delayed sending the cassation representation for the court ruling to be appealed against to the higher-standing instance for one month.

Together with the cassation representation Ms. Ryazanova, Dzerzhinsk Prosecutor’s assistant, submitted a motion asking the court to prolong the limitation period for filing the cassation representation. The Prosecutor mentioned in the motion that there was a good excuse to delay filing the representation within the limitation period, he wrote: “the prosecutor’s office was overloaded, because there are 10 federal criminal judges and 13 magistrates in Dzerzhinsk, but there are much fewer prosecutorial workers, and moreover, the prosecutor was on his yearly leave.” Having studied the arguments, the court concluded that the delay had been motivated and sustained the motion.

Thus, shortage of prosecutorial workers in Dzerzhinsk constantly causes grave procedural violations.