11:06, 4 March 2019

Some 30 people came to first screening of film about torture of Anapa residents

Anna Zavgorodnyaya, the mother of Artyom Ponomarchuk, and Sergey Romanov, the head of the Krasnodar branch of the "Committee against Torture", at the presentation of the film named "Extreme South". Photo by Anna Gritsevich for the "Caucasian Knot"

In Krasnodar, the presentation of the film about the four residents of Anapa, who were tortured and became figurants of a robbery case, was visited by about 30 people came. The authors hope that the film will spread on the Internet and watched by bosses of power structures. Parents of the young people have stated that now they have hope for a fair investigation.

Artyom Ponomarchuk, Aram Arustamyan, Karen and Erik Engoyan, who were detained in Anapa in December 2015, confessed to robbery. Their relatives assert that they had confessed to a crime that they had not committed under cruel torture.

In the film named "Extreme South", the young people told how, by using torture with electricity, gas masks and beatings, they were forced to confess to attacking an employee of a tobacco company.

Sergey Romanov, the head of the Krasnodar branch of the "Committee against Torture" (CaT), recalled that earlier films on cases in Chechnya had been made.

Rights defenders intend to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), said Igor Kalyapin, the CaT leader. He believes that torture is a common tool for increasing the rate of solved crimes in Russia. He noted that the public knows nothing about torture at law enforcement bodies, as such cases are silenced by official mass media.

Anna Zavgorodnyaya, the mother of Artyom Ponomarchuk, has added that only a public outcry can "get things off the ground."

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on March 3, 2019 at 04:30 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Author: Anna Gritsevich

Source: CK correspondent