28 April 2017, 03:40
Defence claims prosecutors' negligent attitude to complaints about torture filed by defendants in Caliphate case
On April 27, in Rostov-on-Don, after a long break arisen from the prosecutors' check, the trial was resumed in the case against 10 young residents of Kabardino-Balkaria, accused of an attempt to create a Caliphate in the republic.
In August 2016, in Rostov-on-Don, the court started to consider the case against natives of Kabardino-Balkaria. According to the investigators, all 10 defendants of the criminal case were members of an illegal armed formation (IAF), whose goal was to change the constitutional system and establish a caliphate with a Sharia form of government in Kabardino-Balkaria. The majority of the defendants claimed that they had testified under torture.
At the court session on April 27, the Prosecutor's Office has stated that it did not find any confirmation of the truthfulness of the defendants' complaints about torture, used against them by law enforcers.
In their turn, defendants' advocates have stated that the prosecutors' check was carried out formally and that the prosecutors only prepared a compilation of old documents and did not question any of the defendants who had complained about torture.
"We are unhappy with the prosecutors' check, it was a complete compilation! They took some documents out of the old file to compile a new one. Nevertheless, the check has refuted the false information voiced by the public prosecutor concerning that fact that the defendants allegedly did not appeal to the law enforcement bodies with complaints about torture. I counted 20 appeals and resolutions. I regret that none of our complainants was questioned concerning the facts of torture, unlike the policemen who used force against them and who, of course, even from the instinct of self-preservation will naturally say that they did not violate anything," advocate Yuri Bachurin told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent after the court session.
Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.
Author: Valery Lyugaev Source: CK correspondent
