Officials investigating reports that police in eastern Russia beat up and raped a prisoner who subsequently died said on Friday they had uncovered a third case of brutality at the same station.
A 24-year-old man from Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, was arrested for the alleged theft of a mobile phone and taken to the Dalny station on March 6, the investigating committee said in a statement.
“They asked him to confess and when he refused they put the handcuffs on the man and beat and kicked him before subjecting him to other violence,” the statement said.
Investigators have opened an inquiry into abuse of power and excessive violence.
Four officers at the station are already at the center of an investigation into the death of 52-year-old Sergei Nazarov on Saturday last week after he was allegedly beaten up and sodomized with a champagne bottle while in detention.
While the four officers have denied the allegations, a fifth has confessed to the assault, police said.
In another alleged incident at the same station, officers are reported to have beaten a 20-year-old woman, Alia Sadykova, to get her to confess to a theft.
More cases are coming to light, local rights groups said: half a dozen people have approached them saying they had been beaten up or abused with bottles at the Dalny station.
Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev denounced the killing of Nazarov in comments yesterday, but has resisted calls for sanctions against higher-ranking officials.
Former Russian Interpol bureau head Vladimir Ovchinsky said that it is Nurgaliyev himself who should go.
There have been numerous scandals involving cases of police corruption, brutality and even murder in Russia, despite a promise by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would make reforms of the service a priority.
In Kazan on Thursday, activists demonstrated outside the regional police headquarters protesting police abuse in the city.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS