A Dagestan court has declared illegal inaction in the investigation of an attack on a Memorial employee

On October 1, the Kirovsky District Court of Makhachkala declared illegal the inaction of the investigation into the case of beating of human rights activist and former employee of the Dagestan branch of Memorial Sirazhutdin Datsiev. This was reported by the Memorial Human Rights Center.

Thus, the court sided with Datsiev’s defense, which demanded that the lack of response from the police, who restricted access to the case materials, be declared illegal.

On August 18, the human rights activist’s lawyer, Shamil Magomedov, submitted a request to investigators to familiarize themselves with the materials of the case of beating Datsiev. He did not receive a response within the required three days and two weeks later he filed a complaint with the court about the inaction of the investigators.

The trial lasted three days, and after the first hearing, the lawyer received a response by mail from the Ministry of Internal Affairs that his request to familiarize himself with the case materials was granted. During the trial, the prosecutor admitted that the letter was sent only on September 16.

In March 2018, Sirazhutdin Datsiev, who at that time was still the head of the Dagestan representative office of the Memorial Human Rights Center , was attacked by an unknown person . This happened near the human rights activist’s house: the attacker got out of the car, hit Datsiev on the head with something heavy and then disappeared. As a result of the blow and fall on the asphalt, the human rights activist received injuries and bruises.

• A few months before the attack on Datsiev in January 2018, unknown persons set fire to the local office of the Human Rights Center Memorial. The next day after this, the employees of the human rights center received threats . Despite the fact that human rights activists connect these episodes, the investigation decided to investigate the arson of the car, the threats and the attack on Datsiev separately.