New Russian Police Abuses Reported

Further instances of police brutality have been reported in Russia on Monday, with the announcement that a policeman who beat a detainee to death in the Nizhny Novgorod Region received a ten-year prison term, and confirmation that a suspect has died in Krasnodar region while in police custody within the last week.

On January 10, 2012, four people were detained, after a corpse was found in Nizhny Novgorod Region’s Diveevo village. A local policeman who was questioning the detainees violently beat one of them. The man was then taken to hospital where he later died.

The policeman was charged with intentionally inflicting grievous harm which resulted in the death of the detainee, and was subsequently convicted.

“The court sentenced the policeman to ten years in a strict regime penal colony and officially banned him form filling positions in law enforcement and state structures for a further three years,” a police press release said.

Also on Monday, the Investigative Committee of Russia’s Southern Krasnodar Territory announced that a suspected criminal had died in a police car en route to police station after policeman broke three of his ribs.

The 37-year-old man, identified only as Omar, was detained on May 19 on suspicion of storing drugs, but information about this has only been released on Monday.

Police in Russia have faced a spate of scandals in recent months, involving deaths in custody and other abuses. Last week, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said new measures aimed at tightening police discipline would be introduced.

On March 28, two policemen and their accomplice from the Kemerovo Region in Siberia were charged with beating to death a 25-year-old man in December.

“The officers interrogated the man about his role in several crimes. They illegally moved him to a private garage. The policemen and their accomplice tortured the detainee to force him to admit his guilt,” the Investigative Committee said.

In March, Nurgaliyev fired the head of a district police department in the Russian republic of Tatarstan after a detainee died in custody after police allegedly sodomized him with a bottle.

The victim, Kazan resident Sergei Nazarov, 52, died while being treated in hospital for severe colon damage, shortly after his arrest on March 9. Police say Nazarov was detained for disorderly conduct, but his relatives claim the charges against him may be false.

Nazarov managed to tell medical staff at the hospital that he was raped and beaten up by policemen, according to his relatives. Preliminary examinations found his injuries were caused by a blunt object, and that “he could not have done it to himself.”

 

Leave a comment