The prosecutor's office canceled the refusal to initiate a case of torture of three Anapa residents at the police department

In Anapa, the prosecutor's office canceled the refusal to initiate cases based on complaints from local residents Artem Beglaryan and Grigory Achkasov, who spoke about electric shock torture and beatings at the local department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This was reported by the Committee against Torture.

Human rights activists write that representatives of the prosecutor’s office are also establishing the location of another complaint about torture from local resident Tigran Grigoryan and the verification materials on it.

Residents of Anapa claim that in January 2015 they were detained by criminal investigation officers and tortured for a day at the local police station, demanding to confess to a robbery against an elderly couple.

“Since I refused to confess, I was taken to a room where a transformer or welding machine was located. They put me face down on a bench, with my arms and legs tied to it. After that, wires were connected to the wrists and ankles using iron clamps and they began to release current, periodically increasing and decreasing the voltage,” said Grigoryan.

Beglaryan said that he was detained on December 12, 2015 - a car stopped in front of him, from which five men ran out and began to beat him. According to Beglaryan, when he tried to escape, they started shooting at him from a traumatic pistol and hit him in the back. Then they put a bag over the man’s head and took him into the forest.

“There they started beating me, demanding that I tell them where the money stolen during the robbery was. Already at the police department where I was taken, I refused to write “turning myself in,” after which they tortured me with electric shock, putting a gas mask on my head,” Beglaryan said.

During the examination, doctors recorded numerous tumors on Beglaryan. Achkasov also spoke about beatings and electric shocks. During the medical examination, he had abrasions on his left arm and a bruise in his back. As a result, all detainees signed a confession.

Soon Beglaryan complained about the police to the Anapa interdistrict prosecutor's office, from where his complaint was forwarded to the city investigative department. Two months later, at the request of Beglaryan, an investigation was launched, as a result of which the investigation did not open a criminal case. Later, the investigator also refused to initiate a criminal case based on the complaints of Achkasov and Grigoryan.

In July 2016, Grigoryan, Beglaryan and Achkasov were found guilty of robbery and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

Earlier, Mediazona talked about four residents of Anapa who also complained of torture at the local department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. All of them pleaded guilty to robbery (Part 3 of Article 162 of the Criminal Code).

According to the victims, that same year they were beaten at the police station and tortured with electricity to extract confessions of robbery. Thus, according to one of the defendants in the case, he was strangled with a gas mask and raped with a rubber stick. In the fall of 2017, due to complaints of torture, the regional Investigative Committee office opened a case of abuse of power with the use of violence (clause “a” of Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code).