| 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
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