Mozdok resident pickets in Moscow over security forces' persecution of her family

The family of Rostislav Melnichenko, who unsuccessfully sought to open a case about his beating by a security officer in Mozdok, faced threats and pressure from law enforcement officers, said his sister Yulia. She went to picket outside the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow, after which she spent more than three hours in police custody.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" wrote, Mozdok resident Rostislav Melnichenko said that in March 2019 he was beaten by a security officer and hospitalized with injuries. According to Melnichenko, the local police officer who witnessed the incident "did not stop it in any way." Rostislav's sister Yulia Melnichenko complained to Putin about the refusal to investigate the beating of her brother. In March 2021, she reported threats to the family from officials, as well as people with criminal records. After this, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office recognized the investigation's refusal to initiate a criminal case on the beating of Rostislav as illegal, but in May 2021, another refusal to initiate a criminal case followed. Later, Yulia reported that the Investigative Committee refused to accept her appeal.

Yulia Melnichenko herself informed the "Caucasian Knot" about the picket held in Moscow on September 11. The Mozdok resident came to the department building with a poster: "The prosecutor's office is obliged to protect the rights of citizens, not violate them. Stop the repressions!"

“My action lasted only 25 minutes. An employee of the prosecutor's office came out, took a photo of the poster, and since the prosecutor's office employees did not like the content of the poster, they immediately called the police, who detained me. They took me to the Tverskoy District Department, and after three hours and 20 minutes they released me without drawing up a report,” said Yulia Melnichenko.

As Yulia explained, she went out with a poster to the building of the Prosecutor General's Office, since the department ignores her appeals. In the spring, Melnichenko recorded another appeal to Putin, stating that her family was being unjustifiably persecuted by security forces. “This appeal from the Presidential Administration was forwarded to the Prosecutor General’s Office, but to date there has been no response to this appeal, just as there has been no response to other appeals to the Prosecutor General’s Office,” she said.

According to Melnichenko, the security forces have continued to exert even more pressure, intimidation, and falsification of administrative cases against her and her brother after learning that they are Ukrainians by nationality. She recalled that among the materials of the investigation into the beating of her brother in 2019, thanks to law enforcement, a forensic medical examination report appeared, according to which Rostislav “allegedly simulated” jaw fractures.

“According to experts, the brother was such a seasoned malingerer that he deceived not only the hospital doctors, but also two X-ray machines and a CT disk by using the wrong angle, which, according to experts, resulted in projections of fractures appearing on the images, which supposedly did not exist (...) The only state expert radiologist who was part of the expert commission and had the right to diagnose fractures issued a conclusion that there were fractures, but his study was unreasonably rejected,” she added.

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