Relatives of Oleg Nosov, a resident of the village of Gazyr in the Krasnodar Territory, informed the “Team Against Torture” about his beating at the police department. According to them, the security forces wanted the man to confess to stealing the metal.
As human rights activists write, on the night of February 3-4, 15 criminal investigation officers from Tikhoretsk, Krasnodar and the village of Vyselki, 30 kilometers from Gazyr, came to Nosov’s home. The victim was alone with two small children, three and five years old, while his wife was in the hospital with the youngest child.
The security forces took the Kuban man away at the Tikhoretsky district police station, leaving the children at home alone. The man learned from the police that he was suspected of stealing metal (clause “c” of Part 3 of Article 158 of the Criminal Code), the circumstances of which are unknown. Nosov did not admit guilt, after which, according to him, the police decided to extract testimony by force.
“They took me out into the corridor and threw me on the floor. We tied our arms and legs with tape and pulled the crowbar between our arms and the back of our knees. In this position, they dragged me to the end of the corridor and hung me on a crowbar between the safe and the bench, I ended up upside down. It was very painful,” human rights activists report the man’s words.
After 20 minutes of torture, the Kuban man admitted to the theft. In the morning he was taken to the investigator, where the victim said that he had incriminated himself so that the police would stop torturing him. After this, the operatives, according to Nosov’s relatives, took him to another office, where one of them hit the man in the stomach with his fist, saying: “Don’t you understand anything?”
To stop the torture, the Kuban man cut his hand with a stationery knife, which he was able to quietly take from the investigator’s table during interrogation. Seeing this, the police continued to beat the man in the face, including kicking him, and, according to the victim’s relatives, broke his nose. The Team Against Torture does not have any documents documenting the beatings.
The security forces continued to beat the man in the police station shooting range, where he signed a confession to the theft. At the same time, according to human rights activists, a protocol was drawn up against Nosov for disobeying the police (19.3 of the Administrative Code), but they agreed to take him to the hospital. The man told doctors that he was injured “at home,” fearing that the security forces would continue to beat him.
On February 5, the Vyselkovsky District Court sentenced the Kuban citizen to two days of arrest under a protocol of disobedience to police officers. At trial, he admitted to “flashing his arms” and “using obscene language” when questioned at the police station.
Before the trial, the victim was able to see his wife, who photographed a large bruise around the man's left eye and several abrasions on his forehead and nose. In the morning, Nosov’s wife learned from a friend that her husband had been detained by the police. She immediately went home and discovered the dog was injured. Presumably, the police shot the animal with a pneumatic weapon while detaining the man.
As the “Team Against Torture” writes, Oleg Nosov is now in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Krasnodar. Presumably, he was arrested by the Vyselkovsky District Court of the region, but there is no file on the man’s case on the institution’s website. When exactly the Kuban citizen was sent to the detention center is also unknown.
The “Team Against Torture” of “Mediazona” clarified that the appointed lawyer filed a statement about the torture of Nosov to the investigative department of the Investigative Committee for the Tikhoretsky district, but he was denied initiation of criminal proceedings against police officers. Human rights activists continue to demand that the investigation establish the circumstances of the detention and interrogation of the victim.