From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 11/18/2005 4:46 AM
11.11.2005 11:58 MSK
Tatarstan resident awarded three million rubles for four years of illegal imprisonment
RUSSIA, Tatarstan, Almetevsk. On November 9th, the Almetevsky City Court awarded Yevgeny Vedenin three million rubles as moral compensation for illegal imprisonment. Vedenin was accused of murder and spent almost four years in a penal colony. The Board of the Exchequer of Russia is paying the unprecedented sum, reported the Human Rights Center of Kazan.
On May 20th, 2001, the police detained Vedenin in his apartment. “With no explanation, they pointed at guns at me, placed me on the floor, put handcuffs on me and drove me to the UVD,” described Vedenin.
As it turned out, this was the day Aleksandr Kalyakin, Chief of Security for TatNeft was killed. Yevgeny Vedenin became the only suspect in the murder of a man he didn’t even know. The charge was based on the statement of a witness who recanted in court. But Vedenin was convicted for murder and the illegal possession of firearms and sentenced to 15 years in a penal colony.
In the spring of 2004, in the course of an investigation of police conduct in another matter, one of those detained admitted to the murder of Kalyakin. After Vedenin had served almost a quarter of his sentence, the criminal charge against him was dropped, and he was freed. In May 2005, Yevgeny Vedenin turned for help to the Human Rights Center of Kazan. The Center’s lawyers with support of The Public Verdict Foundation helped him compose a petition for compensation for moral harm, requesting that the Almetevsk Distinct Attorney apologize officially on behalf of the state and that the Ministry of Finance pay five million rubles.
Vedenin said: “My neighbors, family and those closest to me believed I was a killer, and not just an ordinary killer, but one who coolly prepared and perpetrated the murder of an innocent person. In prison I was forced to live by the "standards and the rules" of prison association. I was constantly in danger of being killed, mutilated, morally humbled, and infected by any illness... Each day, I was behind barbed wire for a crime I did not commit, I had to adapt to these conditions ".
Translated by OM Kenney
PRIMA-News [2005-11-10-Rus-36]
http://www.prima-news.ru/eng/news/news/2005/11/11/33923.html
