The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in the case of Andrei Ivanov from Yoshkar-Ola who complained that he had been tortured at a local police station in 2005. A police officer kicked and then beat him with a rubber hose on the head, demanding the admission of robbery. The Committee Against Torture reported on the ruling on December 1.
In July 2005, police officers detained Andrei Ivanov and his friend in the street and took them to the Central Police Station of the Yoshkar-Ola Internal Affairs Directorate. There, as the victim said, a police officer began kicking and then beating him with a rubber hose on the head, demanding the admission of robbery. Ivanov lost consciousness from the received blows and shock, he woke up lying on the floor, covered in blood.
There was another policeman in the office who did not participate in the beating. He called an ambulance for the victim. Doctors, who arrived at the police station, treated the man and recorded numerous injuries. After that, an investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted an identification, during which the victims did not recognize Andrei Ivanov as a person who had robbed them.
Andrei Ivanov filed an application to the Prosecutor's office with a request to initiate a criminal case against the policeman who had beaten him and then applied for legal advice to the Man and Law Human Rights Organization. However, the criminal case against the police officer was never initiated.
According to investigators, Ivanov received injuries when trying to jump out of the window, and the policeman tried to stop Ivanov from escaping by grabbing him by the hand, but he pulled away and struck his head on the safe.
In 2008, lawyers of the Committee Against Torture Human Rights Organization filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. The Strasbourg Court found that Articles 3 and 5 of the Convention on Human Rights had been violated. Andrei Ivanov was awarded compensation for moral harm in the amount of 30 thousand euros.