Head of Makhachkala customs complains to rights defenders about torture

Askandar Bilalov, a former acting head of the Makhachkala customs post, has turned to the Committee Against Torture (CAT) with a complaint about torture after his detention in August 2016, stating that over the past two years, fourteen resolutions were passed on his complaint, rights defenders reported on September 14.

Askandar Bilalov was detained on August 29, 2016, in Makhachkala on suspicion of an official crime.

According to Bilalov, he was tortured by law enforcers on September 4-12, 2016. Immediately after his detention on August 29, he was brought from Makhachkala to one of the isolation facilities in the Stavropol Territory, and on September 4, he was transferred to another one, also located in the Stavropol Territory. On the way from one place to another, he was beaten up, the former head of the customs post asserts.

According to his story, after beating, he was taken to an isolation facility in the Kochubei District of the Stavropol Territory. "Two huge palookas were waiting for me in the cell; they broke my finger and threatened to execute me, if I didn't write a confession to being involved in a criminal grouping for illegal registration of transport vehicles," he said.

On September 6, the Yessentuki City Court found the fifteenth refusal of the investigator to initiate a case on Bilalov's complaint to be legitimate. "To all the arguments, the court replied briefly that the investigator himself knows what activities he should hold and which not," Alamov, a rights defender, has explained. The appeal against this court judgement was filed by rights defenders to the Stavropol Territorial Court.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 14, 2018 at 11:36 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.