CaT asks MIA about additional check

The Committee against Torture (CaT) disagrees with the answer received from Alexander Savenkov, a deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Russia, who saw no inaction of the police during the attack on the office of rights defenders.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on June 3 in Grozny unidentified assailants attacked the office of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG), which includes employees of the CaT. According to eyewitnesses, the police arrived at the place of the pogrom only after the attackers smashed the car of rights defenders and destroyed the office and the apartment of the JMG.

The answer of Alexander Savenkov, sent to the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, says that the MIA found no police inaction during the pogrom of the JMG's office.

In his open letter posted on the CaT's website and addressed to Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the head of the MIA, Igor Kalyapin, the chairman of the CaT, describes the circumstances of what happened in the JMG's office on June 3.

Kalyapin also refutes the allegations of Apti Alaudinov, a Deputy Interior Minister of Chechnya, that the police outfit had immediately left for the place of the incident, because even the records of surveillance cameras evidence a continuous presence of assailants in the premises of rights defenders.

Igor Kalyapin asks Vladimir Kolokoltsev to appoint an additional service check.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.