The beating of opposition activist Dmitry Monakhov at a rally on the Manezh Square on July 18 may result in the review of tens of the cases over the use of force by the police at the street actions. On Wednesday, the human rights activists asked the prosecutor’s office to resume the investigation on the previously closed cases over violence against the journalists and oppositionists at the street actions.
According to the criminal materials over the beating of Dmitry Monakhov that were passed in the Russian Investigative Committee, he arrived at 19:00 Moscow time on July 18 at the State Duma building, where a rally was held in support of oppositionist Alexei Navalny (earlier the Kirov court sentenced him to five years in prison), the Kommersant daily reported. “When I was crying out the slogans, the policemen came up to me and grabbing me by the hands and legs and without explaining the reasons for my detention, began dragging me to the police truck,” the activist said in his plea. In the police truck Monakhov was thrown on the floor, a policeman “squeezed his throat with the hand and inflicted several fist strikes on his head.” Then another policeman began beating him in silence with a rubber stick on the legs. The beatings continued for some time, after that all detainees were released from custody.
Upon the results of a meeting with the police, the activist said in his plea that the medics diagnosed him with brain concussion and bruises of the soft tissues of face and neck. Meanwhile, numerous detainees witnessed the incident. Some of them even managed to take pictures of the scene of beating and fix the numbers of the police badges and the numbers of the police bus.
Along with the Investigation Commission, the plea was also passed to the Moscow prosecutor’s office with the demand to take the criminal case under special control, head of the organization Agora, which represents the interests of the oppositionist Pavel Chikov told the Kommersant daily. The human rights activists also demand that the results of investigation of at least ten cases over the police violence in the street actions should be revised. The case of Gazeta.ru correspondent Alexander Artemyev, the hand of which was broken after a rally on the Triumfalnaya Square in 2010, as well as the case of an anti-fascist and a member of the Opposition Coordination Council Alexei Gaskarov, the head of which was injured at the protest action staged on the Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012 that ended with the clashes, are among the police violence cases. All these cases were closed at different moments of time over the lack of corpus delicti or because the suspects were not found.
Russian Commissioner of Human Rights Vladimir Lukin has already put the case of beating Dmitry Monakhov under control. Meanwhile, head of the Presidential Council of Human Rights Mikhail Fedotov asked Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and Chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin to instruct the heads of the Moscow offices of both agencies to control personally the progress of investigation.