The ECHR awarded half a million euros in compensation to victims of torture in Grozny, Kazan and Samara

The European Court of Human Rights awarded 503 thousand euros in compensation to Russians who suffered from torture: eight people suffered in the Grozny Operational Investigation Bureau-2, and three more in Kazan and Samara in 2003-2008.

Human rights activists began to talk about torture soon after its creation in 2002 to investigate the activities of organized criminal groups in Chechnya. Chechens from other regions were also brought there; they talked about beatings and extorting confessions. The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, demanded the withdrawal of ORB-2, which was not part of the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs, from the republic.

The court awarded 52 thousand euros to all victims in ORB-2. A 26-year-old resident of Grozny, detained during a special operation in May 2005, said that OTB-2 officers beat him with sticks and a shocker, choked him in a gas mask, forced him to inhale ammonia and burned the ends of cigarettes, demanding that he confess to terrorism. According to the man, he was taken several times from the pre-trial detention center to OTB-2 for beatings.

As in the case of other applicants, law enforcement authorities refused to investigate the torture, and the courts found them guilty on the basis of confessions. The ECHR considered these cases a violation of the prohibition of torture, and some of the victims also had the rights to freedom and a fair trial (Articles 3, 5 and 6 of the European Convention).

The ECHR also awarded 52 thousand euros to Sergei Kapranov, held in Samara pre-trial detention center-1, and 15 thousand and 20 thousand euros to Kazan residents Artem Yarullin and Evgeniy Marshallov, detained by police. In all cases, no investigation into torture was carried out.

In 2008, 23-year-old Yarullin was detained drunk on the street at night and taken to a sobering center. When he was not allowed to call his parents, the Kazan resident tried to leave, and the police took him into the corridor and twisted his right arm. In 2006, 43-year-old Marshallov was repeatedly demanded by the police with a gas mask and a stun gun to confess to the murder.

24-year-old Kapranov said that in 2006, fellow inmates in a pre-trial detention center beat him, demanding to admit guilt. The prosecutor's office explained the refusal to open a case of torture by the fact that he inflicted injuries on himself by “falling out of bed” and “cutting himself with a fingernail,” and received a burn to his face by “falling asleep next to the radiators.”