Translated material
Things are dragging on
The court was suspected of sympathy for the Bashkir policemen
Yesterday, another press conference was held in Moscow dedicated to the scandalous “preventive” operation, which was organized by Bashkir policemen in the small town of Blagoveshchensk in early December 2004. For almost a year and a half, officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, human rights activists, and investigators from the prosecutor's office have been trying to figure out who is to blame for the fact that almost 350 people were beaten as a result of a business trip to Blagoveshchensk by an OMON detachment.Yesterday, lawyers representing the interests of victims said that the “Blagoveshchensk case” was being deliberately delayed. On March 13 of this year, the trial of the criminal case against the participants and leaders of this police operation was interrupted in court. The judge decided to return the case to the prosecutor's office, as it should be divided into two parts. Previously, eight police officers had been charged with abuse of power. Among them are three representatives of the leadership: the head of the Blagoveshchensk GROVD Ildar Ramazanov, his deputy Oleg Mirzin and the commander of the OMON company Oleg Sokolov. They, according to the decision of the district court, should be tried separately from ordinary police officers.
After such a decision by the judge, three parties at once - the state prosecution, lawyers for victims and defenders of ordinary riot police - filed a complaint with the Supreme Court of the republic. Bashkiria Prosecutor Sergei Khurtin called the decision illegal: “The trial in the case has clearly become protracted.” The trial began on August 1, 2005, and the hearings were postponed eight times, and during the seven months the case was in court, only 17 victims out of 34 were questioned. after which Judge Tatyana Pisareva issued a ruling according to which the Bashkortostan prosecutor’s office must “re-draft” the indictment.
As Stanislav Markelov, a representative of the victims, said yesterday, this court decision violates the requirements of Art. 237 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, which does not provide for such a basis for returning the case to the prosecutor. According to him, at the moment someone is deliberately trying to disrupt the process in order to release from responsibility people who were not directly involved in the beating, but led the process and gave orders.
A special operation in Blagoveshchensk took place on December 10-13, 2004 in response to the beating of police officers by a group of local residents. GROVD personnel and 17 riot police officers were involved in the events. Over three days, in a city with a population of 30 thousand, from 500 to 1000 people were detained. The investigation proved that during the arrest the police acted with “unjustified cruelty and use of violence.” People were beaten with rubber truncheons and forced to stand in uncomfortable positions for hours. 346 people were officially recognized as victims. A criminal case was initiated against ten employees of the Blagoveshchensk GROVD and riot police. On September 29 and October 12, 2005, the Blagoveshchensk court sentenced two participants in the operation - district police officers Albert Sultanov and Vasily Zhukov - to three years' probation with deprivation of the right to hold public office for "abuse of official powers."
The remaining eight police officers are accused of “exceeding official authority.” At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Bashkiria still refuses to remove from their posts the heads of the Blagoveshchensk GROVD who are on trial. During the trial, the state prosecution three times raised before the court the question of changing the preventive measure for all defendants from recognizance not to leave the place to arrest, but this was refused.