The Sovetsky District Court of Makhachkala placed two police officers under arrest as part of a case of torture of a detainee, court officials said. They are accused of torturing Kurban Dalgatov, RIA Novosti clarified in the higher Supreme Court of Dagestan.
On the night of January 21, 2023, police detained 35-year-old Dalgatov, as they believed that he had helped an acquaintance escape, whom suspected of shooting at a person. Having taken the man to the police department, the security forces began to demand to reveal the whereabouts of their acquaintance and torture him. Due to loss of consciousness, the police called doctors for Dalgatova, but he died.
“They received electric shocks to the heart area, after loss of consciousness with breathing problems followed by cardiac fibrillation (suffocation), he died,” relatives told reporters. Dalgatov, who was a master of sports in freestyle wrestling, worked in Makhachkala at Rosgosstrakh, and before that at the Olympic Training Center.
Seven security officials are involved in the case. The first three detectivesfrom the police department in the Sovetsky district of Makhachkala, they detained him shortly after the death of the Makhachkala resident and were soon arrested. During interrogation, they said that Dalgatov’s injuries appeared when he hit his face on the floor. In April and July they were arrested two more policemen. The last two detectives were detained on October 5, the court decided to arrest them two days later, on October 7. The names of the security forces are not disclosed.
All police officers, except one, are accused of abuse of power with the use of torture, which resulted in death (Part 5 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code). One of the security officials is accused of simply using torture (Part 4 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code).
Dalgatov’s widow Amina, who is raising three children, talked about threats from the “left pages” on social networks because of posts about the investigation into her husband’s torture. The lawyer of policeman Magomed Malikov asks to be released from arrest, since he was not present during the torture of Dalgatov and at that time was interrogating another person. Other police officers, according to the lawyer, “in retaliation” for his cooperation with the investigation, began to testify against him. Policeman Malikov was also threatened with death in the pre-trial detention center.