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5 Kaliningrad police fired after battery incident

The victim later escaped and reported police violence to investigators

MOSCOW, April 11 (Itar-Tass) — Kaliningrad region police chief Yevgeny Martynov fired five police officers in the Chernyakhovsk district, including head of a police station, following the incident in which police tried to force a confession out of a detainee.

"Due to the action which defames the honor and dignity of a police officer, and manifested itself in exceeding authority and gross violation of discipline, the police station director, the criminal police chief and three special detectives have been relieved of their duties," the regional department of the Interior Ministry said on its website.

Earlier, the Investigative Committee /SK/ told Itar-Tass that "on April 6, at least three Chernyakhovsk district police in the Kaliningrad region brought a 26-year-old local resident to wasteland in the town of Chernokhovsk where they obviously exceeded their authority by handcuffing the detainer and inflicting at least eight blows with their hand and feet on his body and legs, and then put a plastic bag on his head and kept it there for some time to stop the inflow of air.

The victim later escaped and reported police violence to investigators. Criminal proceedings were opened under Article 286, Part 3 /"exceeding authority with use of violence and special means"/. The investigator believes the police did it in order to improve their crime exposure rate figures.

The investigator and agents of the regional department of the Federal Security Service are carrying out measures to ascertain the identity of and detain the police officers involved in the crime.