The ECHR awarded 20 thousand euros to an Orenburg resident who “beat himself up” in police custody in 2006

The European Court of Human Rights awarded 20 thousand euros in compensation to a resident of Orenburg for torture in the department for combating organized crime, RAPSI reports .

The materials say that on August 30, 2006, Morgunov was detained by officers of the Organized Crime Control Department on suspicion of involvement in robberies committed by an organized group. The man was arrested.

On September 18, Morgunov was taken from the detention center to the Organized Crime Control building, where officers tortured him, trying to extract a confession. In the report, police officers wrote that the arrested man inflicted the beatings on himself: Morgunov, according to the police, “fell into hysterics, fell to the floor and began to hit wooden tables and chairs.”

Morgunov tried to bring the Organized Crime Control Department employees to justice, but neither the prosecutor's office nor the court found any grounds for this; they referred to the medical examination, which did not establish the fact of beatings, and the testimony of the police. In 2008, Morgunov was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The Strasbourg court found that the Russian authorities violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of torture) and decided to pay Morgunov compensation for moral damage.