20:48, 19 February 2019

Rights defenders re-achieve resumption of case on torture of Krasnodar resident

For the second time, the Prosecutor's Office has found unjustified the investigators' decision to close the case on kidnapping and torture of Krasnodar resident Aram Gambaryan and ordered to resume the criminal investigation.

Aram Gambaryan complained that on March 21, 2017, law enforcers took him to a forest, where they beat him, threatened to kill him, and demanded from him to testify in the case on an attempt to murder a local entrepreneur. According to the Krasnodar resident, he signed a police protocol, and on the other day, he was sentenced to ten days of arrest on the charge of using bad language in a public place. Doctors diagnosed Aram Gambaryan with injuries, including brain concussion.

"On September 10, 2018, five months after the institution of the criminal case, the chief of the investigating team closed it. He came to the same conclusion like his predecessors, who believed Aram Gambaryan had not been kidnapped by anyone and he had been simply taken for questioning as a witness," reports the website of the Committee against Torture (CaT).

According to the rights defenders, on December 27, the criminal case was again closed. "Once again, the Prosecutor's Office recognized the investigator's decision as illegal. On January 31, 2019, the investigation into the criminal case was resumed for the second time," the report says.

Roman Veretennikov, a lawyer of the Committee against Torture, has announced his intention to seek the transfer of the criminal case to the central office of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF).

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 19, 2019 at 04:27 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.