Picketers recall torture of four Anapa residents

Relatives of the Anapa residents, tortured after being detained by law enforcers, and lawyers of the Committee against Torture (CaT) have held a series of solo pickets in the city centre.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Artyom Ponomarchuk, Aram Arustamyan, and Karen and Erik Engoyan, who were detained in Anapa in December 2015, confessed to robbery. Their relatives then stated that the young had confessed to a crime they never committed under cruel torture. However, on March 1, 2019, the investigator closed the torture case, having decided that the victims were slandering law enforcers.

The series of solo pickets was dated to the International Day for the Support of Victims of Torture, Sergey Romanov, the head of the CaT's Krasnodar branch, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. He himself took part in the pickets, as well as Anna Kotsareva and Roman Veretennikov, the CaT's lawyers, Alexander Zavgorodniy, Artyom Ponomarchuk's stepfather, and Samvel Arustamyan, Aram Arustamyan's father. Activists held posters with demands to investigate the torture applied to residents of Anapa.

"We decided to hold pickets in Anapa, because half of the complaints and allegations of torture (used by local law enforcers) originate from this city. People continue complaining about [law enforcers'] illegal actions. By means of these pickets, we supported our applicants and drew attention of law enforcement bodies, the prosecutor's office and the investigating committee to the need of investigating torture cases," Mr Romanov has explained.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on June 26, 2019 at 09:14 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.