23:50, 7 February 2019

Court dismisses arguments of Oyub Titiev's defence

Oyub Titiev (on the left) with his advocate Ilya Novikov. Photo by Patimat Makhmudova for the "Caucasian Knot"

The defence of the head for the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" in Grozny was refused in conducting a handwriting examination of police protocols and excluding the results of the physical and chemical examination from the evidence list. The court also refused to include in the case file the evidence to prove the existence of a police rapid response team (known as GBR) in Kurchaloi. All the law enforcers questioned in court refuted its existence.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on February 6, the court refused to exclude from the evidence a package with traces of scotch tape in which the drugs were wrapped and a protocol for inspecting the place of the incident, with no signature of Ouyb Titiev.

On January 9, 2018, Ouyb Titiev was twice detained on the way to Kurchaloi. He insists that the drugs had been planted on him.

Earlier, the defence had noted that part of the police documents could be signed by an unauthorized employee and demanded to recognize those protocols as inadmissible evidence.

It was also noted that witnesses for the prosecution gave deliberately false testimonies on the important issue in the case.

The court dismisses all defence motions and does not allow the defender to present evidence in favour of Ouyb Titiev, advocate Pyotr Zaikin notes.

Pyotr Zaikin filed the fourth defence motion with a request to recognize one more examination as inadmissible evidence, but the public prosecutor opposed. The judge is expected to pronounce the decision on the defence motion at a court hearing on February 11.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 5, 2019 at 07:45 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.