In court, Elena Barzukaeva answers to law enforcers' lawsuit

For Elena Barzukaeva, applications about her son's torture have turned into lawsuits against her lodged by law enforcers. Investigators refused to investigate her applications, and she had no other way to help her son but to voice out the names of those who could have been involved in the torture in media and at pickets, Barzukaeva herself stated it in court.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that female relatives of the Derbent residents, Islam Barzukaev, Gasan Kurbanov and Mirzaali Mirzaliev, are regularly holding pickets in Makhachkala in support of the young men. At the February 19 picket, the women voiced out the names of the law enforcers, who are believed to be involved in the torture.

Three of the four law enforcers, named by Elena Barzukaeva, lodged a lawsuit against her to protect the honour, dignity and business reputation. Consideration of the lawsuit of one of the law enforcers on the merits was held on April 29.

Elena Barzukaeva said that she went out to a solo picket with a poster containing the law enforcers' names in February 2021, when she had proofs of the torture of her son and his friend Gasan Kurbanov. "I did it because they refused to initiate a criminal case," the woman explained in court.

She said that she learnt the names of the law enforcers who had detained her son in August 2019, after she managed to obtain the resolution on the refusal to initiate a criminal investigation into the use of torture against her son. "The investigator himself gave us the surnames ... in the resolution to refuse to initiate a criminal case. Nobody had obliged me not to disclose the materials of consideration of our application on torture. Therefore, I made these names public," the woman explained. According to her story, in September 2019, for the first time, she managed to visit her son; and Islam Barzukaev said that there were about 10 people who tortured him, including law enforcers named in the investigator's resolution.

She told the court that her son described in detail on six pages how the torture had been carried out; how they used electric shocks, and beat various parts of the body and on the head.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 30, 2021 at 02:25 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.