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Noviye Izvestia, June 17, 2004

The Interior Ministry Is the Major Infringer
The Ombudsman accuses the police of practising torture and abuse
Human rights ombudsman reports on three months of activity

By Alexander Kolesnichenko

Human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin received over 20,000 complaints between March and June. A third of them complained about the police; 19% came from prisoners, with complaints against wardensand prison administrations; 6% concerns abuses by employers; and 5% dealt with encroachments on political rights and the use of administrative resources in elections.

The police force is the major infringer. According to Lukin, all too frequently people are arrested for no good reason, and their presence in detention cells is not recorded. They find themselves locked up, and the police start "working" on them to force them to confess to crimes they never committed. Torture is often used in the Moscow, Leningrad, Tver, Vladimir, Irkutsk, Nizhny Novgorod regions, Krasnodar, and Stavropol. Lukin received a great many complaints about police planting drugs and weapons on suspects. Investigations uphold most complaints, Lukin said.

In the meantime, bringing abusive police to account is not easy at all. By law, the ombudsman may only respond if a citizen challenges a court ruling. This means that the victim is supposed to complain to the prosecutor's office, get turned down, complain to a court, get turned down again, and only then can the victim appeal to the ombudsman. The period between the crime and investigation is much too long. All the same, Lukin had five police officers tried for crimes and eleven more for administrative violations this year.

In an attempt to counter police brutality and lawlessness, a fast response commission was established in Moscow to monitor conditions in detention cells. The panel has the approval of upper echelons of the Interior Ministry to visit to detention cells at any time. In practice, however, officials of the commission are frequently denied entry. While the officials are held up at the front door, the detention cell administration promptly ousts all unlawfully-arrested people through the back door.

Lukin attributes police brutality to the low level of crime-solving. Around 43% of registered crimes (including 20% of first-degree murders) remained unsolved across Russia last year. And 42% of murders in Moscow were not solved. In addition 130,000 cases were closed last year because of the statute of limitations, but the criminals were never found.

 

See also:

Human Rights

Noviye Izvestia, June 17, 2004

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