So, they still beat me?

The Chairman of the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor's Office, Alexander Bastrykin, canceled the decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case regarding the beating of eight young people by Sokolniki police officers in April 2008. Let us remind you that while the case of beating was not opened, the trial of one of the beaten people, Vsevolod Ostapov, who is accused of using violence against a policeman, is in full swing.

As Vremya Novostey writes, Bastrykin also ordered that those responsible for “repeatedly making unfounded procedural decisions” be brought to disciplinary liability.

According to the prosecution, on April 4, 2008, Ostapov allegedly drank beer near the Sokolniki metro station (although he himself claims that he did not have time to take a sip from the bottle), and then allegedly sprayed a can in the face of the policeman who was detaining him, and even hit him with his foot in the groin (this is not confirmed by any of those detained along with Ostapov, and the police are confused in their testimony). Ostapov and his two friends, who stood up for him, were subdued by the police with electric shocks and taken to the police department. Several more people were detained there and came to the police department to find out what had happened - three of them were minors. As the detainees themselves later said, they were beaten for a long time and severely and tortured with electric shocks.

While the case of the beating was still being investigated, the victims were not recognized as victims, no identifications or confrontations were carried out, and the identities of the police officers were not established (which, apparently, did not prevent the same police officers from acting as witnesses in the case of Ostapov’s attack on their colleague). In August 2009, the case was closed for lack of evidence of a crime, then, following a complaint to the capital’s department of the Investigative Committee, the investigation was resumed, but then closed again.

Bastrykin reacted to what was happening after at the end of November 2009, the leader of the movement “For Human Rights” Lev Ponomarev, through the Commissioner for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin, asked him to look into it.