09:24, 20 March 2019

Torture case of Anapa detainees closed

The film "Extreme South". Screenshot of the movie ProtivPytok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9NG2brM83c

The investigator has closed the case of torturing four residents of Anapa after their detention, having decided that they tried to slander law enforcers. For 15 months of the inquiry, no suspects appeared in the case, the "Committee against Torture" (CaT) has noted.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in March, the CaT presented a film about four residents of Anapa, who had been tortured and were kept under house arrest for the fourth year.

Artyom Ponomarchuk, Aram Arustamyan, Karen and Erik Engoyan, detained in December 2015, confessed to robbery. Their relatives kept asserting that they had confessed to the crime they never committed under cruel torture.

One of the victims, Ponomarchuk, said that after detention, law enforcers beat him up, tortured him with electricity and "drove a stick into his anus" when he refused to confess to robbery. Karen Engoyan said that he was tortured with electric current and a gas mask; and the threat of rape with a stick forced him to sign a confession.

This February, the eighth man who was subjected to torture in Anapa, Gregory Shpek, 29, in late 2015 applied to rights defender of the CaT after being released from the colony, where he was serving a sentence for a theft; he had confessed to this crime under torture, the "Mediazona" reported.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on March 20, 2019 at 06:15 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.