ECtHR communicates Eskerkhanov's torture complaint

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has asked the Russian authorities questions in connection with the complaint of Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, a native of Chechnya, about torture by law enforcers during and after the arrest within the murder case of Boris Nemtsov.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on July 13, 2017, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced Tamerlan Eskerkhanov to 14 years in prison for Boris Nemtsov's murder.

As stated by Eskerkhanov in his complaint to the ECtHR, the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) had failed to properly check his application. Back in 2015, Eskerkhanov himself appealed to the Committee against Torture (CaT) saying that during his detention in Moscow on March 7, 2015, people in unmarked uniforms and civilian clothes beat him up and threatened him with physical execution.

Human rights defenders have noted that they had faced investigators' unwillingness to check the Eskerkhanov's application about ill-treatment by law enforcers. The latter were not questioned; no forensic examination was appointed; and no records from CCTV cameras were examined, said Sergey Babinets, a CaT's lawyer.

The ECtHR communicated Eskerkhanov's complaint back on July 7, 2020, says a publication on the ECtHR's website on July 27. Russian authorities were asked questions about whether the complainant had been tortured, exposed to inhuman or degrading treatment after his detention in March 2015, and whether an efficient inquiry was carried out into the detainee's complaints.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 4, 2020 at 07:27 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.