Lawyers of people arrested on suspicion of participating in October’s terrorist raid on the Russian Caucasus city of Nalchick, claim their clients have been tortured by police, the Gazeta daily reported.
On Sunday they distributed photos of the suspects with injuries seen on their bodies to major world media, Alexandra Zernova, an attorney for former Russian Guantanamo prisoner Rasul Kudayev, who was also arrested in Nalchik, said.
Zernova told the paper that she could not even recognize Kudayev on the photo at first due to the injuries he received at the hands of prosecutors.
The pictures will show international experts how Russia treats the 1984 International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the lawyer stressed.
Kudayev’s mother was reportedly also pressed by prosecutors. After she filed a complaint to Amnesty International she was summoned for questioning. Investigators asked her how she dared to say her son had been tortured if she had not seen it.
Local Russian Interior Ministry employees in the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria deny the torture allegations. Three attorneys for the suspects have been suspended from the case after they sent complaints about prosecutors.
One of the lawyers removed, Larissa Dorogova told Ekho Moskvy radio station last week that all the Nalchik detainees, including many innocent local residents, are being subjected to “real tyranny”.
“All the beatings take place with the knowledge of the prosecutor’s office,” Dorogova said. “The arrested people are questioned by investigators from the Southern Federal District department of the Prosecutor General’s Office. They can see what condition the detainees are in but do nothing about it.”
Lawyers have no power in the region, she claimed. “I was forced to give evidence regarding one of the complaints, but it was a trick: the report said that I had given evidence not about the complaint, but about the criminal case itself, which I am not allowed to do,” she said. “As a result I was removed from the case and a court upheld the decision,” she concluded. http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/12/05/nalchiktorture.shtml
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