11:31, 5 May 2005

Torture in pre-trial detention centre denied

Bekhan Gereyev, a detainee suspected of taking part in an attack on republican law enforcement agencies in June 2004 and kept in custody in the pre-trial detention centre of Ingushetia's Internal Affairs Ministry, denies the information of some media about illegal methods used with respect to detainees in the centre. This is what Mukhtar Buzurtanov, chairman of the Legislation, Lawfulness, Law & Order and Security Commission on the Ingush parliament, told Interfax on 4 May.

He said he had talked to Gereyev in the presence of the latter's lawyer in the pre-trial detention centre cell. "Gereyev told me personally that no unlawful methods on the part of centre officers were used with respect to him," Buzurtanov noted.

Musa Ozdoyev, a member of the People's Assembly (legislature) of Ingushetia and leader of the Ingush regional division of the People's Party, had previously announced detainees were tortured in a pre-trial detention centre of Ingushetia's Internal Affairs Ministry.

Torture in pre-trial detention