Court legalizes refusal to investigate torture of Grozny resident

A court in Grozny has refused to satisfy a complaint against a refusal to open a case on the application of Ibragim Yangulbaev about his torture by law enforcers, the Committee against Torture (CaT) has reported today. The defence intends to appeal against the ruling.

On April 23, the rights defenders' complaint was considered by the Staropromyslovsky District Court of Grozny.

"At the court session, we highlighted a number of key questions, which remained unanswered by investigators: they failed to give a legal assessment of Yangulbaev's testimonies, and couldn't explain the origin of his bodily injuries. After all, if, according to investigators, [law enforcers] did not beat Ibragim, then where did he get haematomas and bruises from? As soon as the court is ready with the text of decision with the motivation part, we'll appeal against it at a higher instance," said Dmitry Piskunov, a CaT's lawyer, whose words are quoted in today's report posted on the CaT's website.

According to his story, Ibragim Yangulbaev was beaten up by law enforcers on May 22, 2017. According to Yangulbaev, law enforcers beat and tortured him demanding to disclose the data of the participants of one of the groups in the social network VKontakte, where methods of Chechen power bodies had been criticized.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 24, 2019 at 09:42 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.