Russian Police Face Charges for Brutally Torturing Detainees
- Posted on March 29, 2012 at 4:40pm by
Buck Sexton
- Print »
- Email »
(AP) — Russia’s top investigative agency filed new charges Thursday against police officers accused of torturing detainees amid growing public outrage over police brutality.
The Investigative Committee said it had charged four officers in the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk in the torture death of a detainee. It also leveled new accusations against a police officer in the Volga River city of Kazan who is already in custody on charges of torturing a man to death.
(photo courtesy of interoccupy.org)
Victims and human rights activists say Russian police routinely use torture to extract false confessions from those they have arbitrarily rounded up. They say police reforms undertaken by President Dmitry Medvedev have failed to stop or even contain police crimes and achieved little beyond changing the force’s name.
Kazan resident Sergei Nazarov died earlier this month of injuries suffered when police officers allegedly sodomized him with a champagne bottle. His case has caused outrage across Russia and drawn calls for an urgent overhaul of a force long accused of corruption and brutality.
The four officers charged in Novokuznetsk were accused of causing a detainee’s death by asphyxiation by putting a gas mask on him and cutting off the access to air – a torture technique popular among Russian police, according to rights groups.
Police regulations still require officers to report a certain quota of solved crimes, a practice that encourages police to make arbitrary arrests and extract false confessions to make their numbers. Police from across Russia also learned cruel interrogation practices during tours of duty in Chechnya and other restive provinces in Russia’s Caucasus, contributing to the culture of brutality.
In the Kazan case, officers rounded up the 52-year-old Nazarov on charges of stealing a cellphone. He died at a local hospital two days later of a ruptured rectum.
His death sparked street protests in Kazan that attracted nationwide attention and led to a federal probe. The investigators arrested five police officers accused of torturing Nazarov, and the entire precinct was disbanded.
Local residents then began lining up to tell federal investigators their stories of torture by police officers.
The Investigative Committee said Thursday that Almaz Vasilov, one of the suspected torturers of Nazarov, has been charged in a separate case when he and other officers tried to force a 20-year-old man to confess in a crime by beating him and then pulling down his pants and trying to sodomize him with a pencil. The committee said the victim managed to avoid the torture by running out into a corridor.
Many others couldn’t run away, according to Russian media, which reported the stories of several other victims. In one case, a 22-year-old computer programmer said officers from the same precinct tried to force him to confess to a theft and then sodomized him, first with a pencil, then with a champagne bottle.
“Where is the bottle? You always must have a bottle!” Oskar Krylov recalled a police chief yelling to his subordinates, according to the Gazeta.ru news website.
The Investigative Committee said it had detained that officer and his colleague on charges of torturing Krylov.
(AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
The scandal over police torture in Kazan followed other cases of police brutality, some publicized and others previously hushed up or unreported. They include:
- A local journalist in the Siberian city of Tomsk died of injuries in 2010 after a police officer sodomized him with a broomstick.
- A teenager in St. Petersburg was beaten to death in police custody in January.
- In another case in the same region of Siberia as Novokuznetsk, two officers were accused of torturing a detainee to death in a garage and then throwing his body out on a road.
Activists have urged the Kremlin to change regulations that encourage police brutality, oust Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, conduct a thorough cleansing of the police force and set up a separate independent body to would investigate police crimes.
Alexei Navalny, a popular anti-corruption blogger and a key organizer of massive opposition protests in Moscow, said the government should dismiss all Kazan policemen and recruit new ones as a model of how to conduct a future nationwide reform of the police.
“It can’t get any worse,” he wrote on his blog. “And they need to throw Nurgaliyev out. How long can it go?”
Comments (25)
Sign In To Post Comments! Sign In
Popular Stories
Paper Details Obama Admin’s Alleged Secret Note Sent to Iran: If Israel Attacks, We Won’t Get Involved 583 Comments
‘Made Up Religion’: TV Historian Enrages Muslims, Receives Threats After Producing UK Documentary Questioning Islam’s Beginnings 413 Comments
This Is the Creationists‘ Response to Scientist Bill Nye’s Viral Pro-Evolution Video Claiming They Harm Children 409 Comments
Roseanne Barr: Most Billionaires ‘Violent Pedophiles’ & ‘Heartless’ Cocaine Addicts 374 Comments
President Obama Issues Major ‘Green Energy’ Executive Order 366 Comments
Faith
- This Is the Creationists‘ Response to Scientist Bill Nye’s Viral Pro-Evolution Video Claiming They Harm Children 409 Comments
Pakistani Muslim Cleric Accused of Framing Disabled Christian Girl in Koran-Burning Case Read More- ‘Made Up Religion’: TV Historian Enrages Muslims, Receives Threats After Producing UK Documentary Questioning Islam’s Beginnings 413 Comments
Meet the Controversial German Imam Accused of Brutally Beating His Wife & Pushing Sharia Law Read More
‘Self-Proclaimed Messiah’ & Unification Church Leader the Rev. Sun Myung Moon Has Died — Here’s His Life Story Read More
Business
- President Obama Issues Major ‘Green Energy’ Executive Order 366 Comments
- Germany’s Upcoming Court Ruling Will be Huge for the EU Read More
Ford Looks to Beat Toyota for Best-Selling Car in 2012 With This Model 151 Comments
Bernanke & QE3: Here’s What You Need to Know Read More- ‘Extortion’: Why Did the Labor Department ‘Drop the Hammer’ on Oregon Farmers? 302 Comments
Technology
- This Is the Creationists‘ Response to Scientist Bill Nye’s Viral Pro-Evolution Video Claiming They Harm Children 409 Comments
‘TaserDrone’: Hackers Weaponize Quadcopter With Actual ‘Shocking’ Technology Read More
Ever Heard of the Wild ‘Burning Man’ Festival in the Middle of the Nev. Desert? Here’s Your Primer Read More
Stanford Develops Technology ‘Better Than Steroids’ for Athlete Recovery Read More
Have You Pretended to Know What ‘the Cloud’ Is? You’re Not Alone Read More
Submitting your tip... please wait!
TROONORTH
Posted on March 30, 2012 at 8:26pmNo thank you! No champaign for me constable. Trying to cut back . .. .. .. .
Report Post »lisa2994
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 9:27pmDoes everyone understand the other meaning behind this story? Exactly what will happen here if we don’t all stand up!
Report Post »BlenGeck
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 10:22pmExactly Lisa…and B Insane Obama is learning quickly from the Commies. Knee slapping and having Medevev “transmit message to Vladimer” tells us all we need to know. He doesn’t even try very hard to hide it. Commie bastard.
Report Post »BSdetector
Posted on March 30, 2012 at 7:51amDid anyone else notice that they really REALLY like to sodomize people? I’m thinkin they should dress these police up in drag before they send em out…
Report Post »charleyrocks
Posted on March 30, 2012 at 4:32pmwhy are evil men so fascinated by bottles up the ying yang. And do the occupy groups know what is in store for them if they change the government like they want to?
Report Post »thedarkknightreturns
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 8:23pmCommunism has never truly existed in any government no matter how sympathetic a regime supposedly is to Marxist ideology, it doesn’t work, modern China and Russia are Fascist and totalitarian because the realization of better economics through a limited free market command economy has proven itself useful to the state, both countries also recognize private property ownership, these two aspects are the tangible distinction which are very contradictory to the Marxist system.
Report Post »Magyar
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 7:57pmSame ****—just wearing different hats!
Report Post »nosharia
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 7:13pmand this is the government Obama is snuggling up to.
Report Post »RayOne
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 7:52pmThat government is knee deep in the ‘mob’, they love Barry.
Report Post »RingADingDing
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 7:03pmI don’t see the point of posting some thing negative about an all white country like Russia. Russia and China are the only two countries in the world that don’t let the Jews own and run them.
Report Post »techengineer11
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 10:32pmWell they had Russia in a death grip for the most part of the 20th century.. Russia seems to have freed itself from their control; however, now they have America under their thumb.
Regardless you see constant negative articles on Russia and Putin today simply because they are not under Jewish control and they are not playing along with their NWO. I’d say about 5-10% of Conservatives even have a clue as to what is really going on and maybe .5-1% of liberals.
Report Post »tzion
Posted on March 30, 2012 at 1:04amAh, the two collectivists spouting their bias once again. So bellboy, are you saying that if a country has a population that is entirely white they are automatically free from all criticism? It’s collectivist mindsets like that that create people like Hitler, Stalin, Arafat, etc. It was thinking like that that started BOTH World Wars and was the driving force behind European Imperialism. America was founded on individualism, a concept that seems to be completely lost on you two.
Report Post »blazingaway
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 6:17pmThese police officials are nothing more than the enforcement arm of a criminal system posing as a government and security force. The people are simple their beasts of burden and worth nothing as human beings. Russia has been nothing more than a form of modern day slavery as is China and ever other communist, socialist, marxist, dictatorship in existence and American is heading there soon if BO has is way.
Report Post »Just in time
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 6:03pmAren’t these the people that the POTUS wants to be more FLEXIBLE with?
Report Post »barber2
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 6:18pmYes. And Comrade Putin was a KJB member. Am sure he laughs at Obama ‘s “ flexibility” ….
Report Post »TH30PH1LUS
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 5:59pmIn unrelated news. Political National Atheism breeds rampant corruption.
Report Post »scuba13
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 5:54pmWhy are those Russian police beating one of Encinoms Cousins?
Report Post »thegreatcarnac
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 5:32pmDA Komerade….I see you got traffic ticket. You must either pay fine or get large pencil up your rectum 47 times….you choose. Welcome to new Rrrrrussia. In old days…you would not get to choose and your punishment would have been both options.
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 5:31pmDear IC: You were suppose to play Sgt Schultz, not Col Scherbakov… RUN!
Report Post »thegreatcarnac
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 5:15pmRussians have always been dumb brutes and have always leaned towards torture. They still have a touch of Neanderthals in them.
Report Post »Max jones
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 5:00pmTheir mentors use vlad the impalor’s practises…..just smaller. Whats with this rectum thing ,anyway? freudian psychology aside, this is repressed desires at work. Remember these are Barack’s new friends. The fema camps will probably be manned by foreign troops(mercs). they won’t use champagne bottles though I would assume……
Report Post »Mark0331
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 4:59pmThere are crooked cops everywhere…this is inhumane and sad, but par for the course and it is SOP for a Communist Nation/Communist mentality, not too suprising. Sad.
Report Post »burnteye86
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 4:54pmAh, Communism. Coming to a freedom loving country near you.
Report Post »llotus
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 4:53pmHillary is definately needed in russia to smother out the inhumanity there. Lotus.
Report Post »COFemale
Posted on March 29, 2012 at 4:49pmNaw, not Russia, Obama’s new best friends. Tell me it ain’t so?
Report Post »