The ECHR awarded 24 thousand euros to a resident of Yoshkar-Ola, who was tortured by police with electric shock and strangled with a cable

The European Court of Human Rights awarded 24 thousand euros in compensation to Yoshkar-Ola resident Suren Hovakimyan, who was tortured by police officers to confess to murder, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture reports .

According to the victim, in 2007 the police took him out of the city twice to torture him. First, the police attached wires to his fingers and turned on the current, and when the man agreed to their demands, they took him to the prosecutor’s office for questioning. He refused to testify and was sent to the isolation ward.

The next day he was informed that he was suspected of murder and was required to write a confession. Hovakimyan refused, and the police again took him out of town, threw him into a pit, tied a rope around his neck and began to choke him.

On November 5, 2008, Hovakimyan was sentenced to 16 years in prison, but no criminal case was opened regarding the use of violence. “Over the course of nine years, investigators from the Republican Investigation Department issued ten decisions refusing to initiate criminal proceedings. Moreover, the last three “refusal” decisions were made after the Russian Federation admitted violations of articles of the European Convention in relation to Hovakimyan,” the Committee for the Prevention of Torture said in a statement.

As a result, the ECHR found the Russian authorities to have violated three articles of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (prohibition of torture, the right to liberty and security of person, the right to an effective remedy).