ECtHR obliges Russia to pay 50,000 euros to two torture victims in Krasnodar Territory

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has awarded 25,000 euros of compensation to Dmitry Golubyatnikov and Sergey Zhuchkov each, residents of the Krasnodar Territory, sentenced to long prison terms after being tortured by law enforcers.

According to Golubyatnikov, on January 21, 2005, he was detained in the town of Tikhoretsk by three policemen (called militiamen then). They brought him to the station and demanded to confess to the murder of a local woman. Golubyatnikov refused, after which he was kicked and beaten up with a rubber truncheon. Then, they put a gas mask on him and blocked the air.

Another applicant, Sergey Zhuchkov, told that he was detained on January 26, 2005, and forced to confess to beating up the same woman at the police station. Zhuchkov could not withstand beating with a rubber truncheon and torture with a gas mask; he wrote surrender and confessed to being a Golubyatnikov's accomplice.

In 2005, the Tikhoretsk Court sentenced Golubyatnikov to 12 and Zhuchkov to nine years in prison. Both defendants refused to plead guilty. They demanded to investigate their allegations of torture, but the prosecutor's office refused to open a criminal case; and the courts dismissed their complaints of ill-treatment as unjustified.

The ECtHR decided that the articles of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), relating to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture had been violated.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on October 9, 2018 at 07:25 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.