Rights defenders achieve recognition of red tape in Aram Gambaryan's torture case

In his answer to the complaint lodged by the "Team against Torture"*, the head of the Krasnodar Territorial Branch of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF), has admitted that the preliminary inquiry into the torture case of Aram Gambaryan was suspended unreasonably.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Aram Gambaryan, a resident of Krasnodar, stated that on March 21, 2017, law enforcers took him to the forest, where they beat him up, threatened to kill him and demanded to testify within the case of an attempt on the life of a local entrepreneur. Only in April 2018, the lawyers of the "Committee against Torture" succeeded in initiating a criminal case on abuse of power by the law enforcers, who had beaten Gambaryan. On December 14, it became known that a court in Krasnodar had treated the investigators' inaction as illegal.

Earlier, in January, lawyers sent complaints to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on behalf of eight residents of the Krasnodar Territory, who alleged torture by law enforcers; Aram Gambaryan was among them, the "Utrenny Yug" (Morning South) outlet has reported.

The "Caucasian Knot" has repeatedly reported about the complaints of residents of the Krasnodar Territory about torture, on which the initiation of criminal cases was denied. Thus, in December 2020, Evgeny Lastin complained that he was detained and under torture forced to confess to stealing a razor set, which he tried to sell on an ad site. For seven times, investigators refused to open a criminal case on torture.

Mardiros Demerchyan, a builder of Olympic facilities in Sochi, was accused of stealing a cable and subjected to severe torture. However, investigators refused to open a case on torture; moreover, Demerchyan himself was accused of false denunciation. In May 2018, the court closed Demerchyan's case, but did not rehabilitate him.