Court upholds refusal to initiate a case on torture of Khumaid Khaidaev

The Kirov District Court of Irkutsk has found legitimate the refusal to initiate a torture case of Khumaid Khaidaev, a native of Chechnya, who was tortured in a SIZO (pre-trial prison) after a prisoners' riot in a local colony. This court refusal will be appealed against, human rights defenders have stated.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 16, 2020, the "Civic Assistance" Committee* reported that a native of Chechnya, Khumaid Khaidaev, had been subjected to severe torture after a riot of prisoners in the colony in the town of Angarsk. On November 30, the Investigating Committee for the Irkutsk Region found no corpus delicti in the actions of the SIZO staff.

Now, the Kirov District Court of Irkutsk has upheld the refusal to open a criminal case on Khumaid Khaidaev' torture in the SIZO, the "Committee against Torture" (CaT)** reported on June 6.

According to Vladimir Smirnov, a lawyer for the CaT**, "it is by no means possible to agree with the court's ruling." He has noted that investigators didn't even try to establish in which cell Khaidaev was kept in his first days in the SIZO, and failed to question his cellmates. The case files also contain no doctors' conclusion about Khaidaev's traumas.

Mr Smirnov has also noted that Khaidaev claimed to have been beaten up on April 10-13, 2020, while investigators had seized documents that date back to the period starting from April 14.

*The committee has been put by the Russian Ministry of Justice on the register of non-commercial organizations (NCOs) performing the functions of a foreign agent.

**In 2015, the "Committee against Torture" (CaT) was included into the register of NCOs performing the functions of a foreign agent. In this regard, its leaders liquidated the committee and founded a new legal entity – the "Committee for the Prevention of Torture" (CPT). It was also included into the list of foreign agents and was closed. Currently, the CaT operates as an unregistered public association.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on June 8, 2022 at 05:00 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.