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Baikal prosecutor’s office demands real terms in prison for policemen torturing children

They were passed suspended sentences from three to five years
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

ULAN-UDE, March 18 (Itar-Tass) – The Prosecutor’s Office in the Baikal Territory demands real terms in prison for four former policemen, who were found guilty of tortures of the detainees.

“The public prosecutor did not agree with the sentences, which on March 6 the Mogochi District Court handed down on former policemen from the Mogochi police station Alexander Nikitin, Alexander Borodin, Alexei Nikitin and Murata Zakuyev, who were passed suspended sentences from three to five years for abuse of powers committed with the use of violence and special tools.”

“The legal penal for criminal cases of the Baikal territorial court received an appeal with the demand to toughen the verdict,” the Prosecutor’s Office in the Baikal Territory told Itar-Tass on Monday.

“The facts of use of violence and special tools by the former policemen against underage residents of the town Mogochi stirred up a sweeping public response, therefore, due to the position of the defendants and the pre-trial agreement on cooperation concluded with them, the public prosecutor demanded the court should sentence them to the minimal possible term in prison. However, the public prosecutor noted that the details of the crime, particularly the tortures of underage injured parties, a considerably undermined authority of the police, are that the defendants should serve the sentence really at a penitentiary.

The detectives and the court found that in 2009–2012 four former policemen used the violence and tortures against the underage residents in the town Mogochi, making the latter to confess in the crimes. The policemen were beating up the detainees, particularly with rubber sticks, put the gas masks on the detainees and shut down the oxygen access to them, made them suffocating with the vapours of the toxic agent, putting acetone in the tube of the gas mask. Beating the confession for the crimes the underage people did not commit, the former policemen were torturing the detainees with the high voltage cable. The defendants pierced the eardrum of a detainee with an unknown metallic object. Eight residents in the town Mogochi are the injured parties in the criminal case.

The defendants are charged with Article 286 Part 3 clauses a and b of the Russian Criminal Code for abuse of powers committed with the use of violence and special tools that envisages up to 10 years in prison.