19:53, 26 December 2025

Security forces escaped responsibility for torturing Anapa residents.

The statute of limitations for holding police officers accountable for the torture of four Anapa residents has expired; no one has been punished for the torture in 10 years. The statute of limitations has also expired for charges against Anapa residents whose confessions were extracted under duress.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot," in October 2024, the Anapa District Court for the third time remanded for further investigation the case opened nine years ago against local residents who claimed confessions were extracted under torture. The prosecutor's office appealed the decision, and the defendants expressed hope that the investigation would close the case that had already ruined their lives.

In December 2015, wholesale warehouse employees Aram Arustamyan, Artem Ponomarchuk, and Karen and Erik Yengoyan were detained in Anapa on suspicion of a group robbery of local resident Alexey Sveshnikov, who was delivering goods to retail outlets. They confessed to the robbery, but later claimed that their confession had been extracted under torture and appealed to human rights activists. Ultimately, the torture case was closed. The robbery case was repeatedly tried in court, but no verdict was issued. Investigators subsequently reclassified the case from robbery to fraud. According to the new investigation, Sveshnikov initially conspired with the defendants, and the robbery itself was a stunt. At a hearing in March 2024, Sveshnikov also testified that physical violence was used against him to extract a confession.

In December of this year, the court dismissed the criminal case against Anapa residents who complained of torture. The case was returned to the prosecutor twice, and then reclassified from "robbery" to "fraudulent actions by a group." In December of this year, the court dismissed the case altogether due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution," reports the human rights project "Team Against Torture"*.

A similar story happened with the complaint of torture. The Investigative Committee did not open a case for almost two years and only did so in 2017. Investigators illegally dismissed the criminal case four times and illegally suspended it another four times. Ultimately, the courts upheld the dismissal. The statute of limitations for holding police officers accountable in the torture case also expired on December 25, 2025, human rights activists reported.

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Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/419433