On August 24, the Visaitovsky District Court of Grozny once again denied the lawyers who are seeking to initiate a criminal case on the torture of Chechen actor Timur Debishev. The "Team Against Torture" has been appealing the investigator's decisions for five years.
Timur Debishev contacted the "Committee Against Torture" in November 2018. He said that the police found his phone number in the contact list of a girl suspected of drug trafficking and called him in for questioning. At the police station where he showed up, he was beaten, tortured with electricity, strangled, forced to carry one of the police officers on himself, demanding that he give up the contacts of drug users.
Human rights activists are seeking to initiate a criminal case under the article on abuse of power by police officers, but the investigator of the first department for the investigation of especially important cases of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Chechen Republic, which is handling the investigation, has refused them 13 times. In one of the first court hearings, he explained that he had taken all necessary measures to clarify the factual circumstances of the incident and the names of the persons involved. According to him, he interviewed all the employees named by Debishev and others who could have information on the merits of the case, inspected the police department building, conducted forensic examinations, operational-search activities and other procedural actions, as a result of which "Debishev's arguments about the use of physical violence against him were not confirmed, and taking this into account, the investigator refused to initiate a criminal case ... due to the absence of a criminal event." The investigator explained the bodily injuries recorded on Debishev by the expert as a fight that allegedly broke out between witnesses called to the police for questioning when they began to find out who told their names to the officers. The court found the investigator's refusal to initiate a case against the police officers to be justified and lawful, and dismissed the applicant's complaint. In appealing this decision, the lawyers pointed out many details indicating that the investigation was carried out formally, and that the evidence of the police officers' non-involvement was fabricated. Thus, they noted that the investigator did not establish the owner of the silver-and-steel Patriot in which Debishev was driven to the search of his place of residence. The testimonies of various witnesses are so identical that even typos coincide, that is, they were simply copied and not written down from the words of eyewitnesses. The investigator did not explain why he preferred the later conclusion of the medical expert and how Debishev could have known about the location of the garage premises in the police department if he was not held there, etc.
On April 28, Judge Ruslan Dandaev, who was supposed to consider the complaint about the inaction of the investigator, recused himself: according to him, he had already considered a similar complaint earlier and he "has an established opinion on the subject of the complaint, in connection with which the applicants have the right to question the objectivity of the decision taken." Another judge considered the complaint and again rejected it.
On July 19, the Supreme Court of Chechnya once again overturned this decision and returned the material to the Visaitovsky Court of Grozny. On August 24, Judge Vakha Mintsaev considered the complaint, which was represented in the interests of Debishev by the head of the North Caucasus branch of the "Team Against Torture" Ekaterina Vanslova, and again issued a ruling to reject it. The reasoned decision is not yet available on the court's website.