Court in Dagestan approves verdict to law enforcers for kidnapping and torture

The Supreme Court (SC) of Dagestan has refused to commute the sentences passed to five law enforcers who figured in the case of kidnapping and torture, and replaced the conditional imprisonment of one of the convicts for real one.

Rasul Saduev (in 2016, his advocate gave the "Caucasian Knot" his surname as Sadulaev), the head of the criminal investigation division for the Khasavyurt District of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), was detained in September 2016, together with Gimbat Lakhiyakhov, a deputy head of the criminal investigation department of the Dagestani MIA, on suspicion of extortion. In December of the same year, the prosecutor's office announced that Saduev was accused of kidnapping, illegal weapon and drug trafficking. He refused to plead guilty.

According to the court, in 2016, on the way to the airport on the "Kavkaz" Highway, the victim's taxi was stopped by policemen. They demanded that she get out, and in the vicinity of the village of Agachaul the car was blocked by other cars. Four masked men and one unmasked forced the woman out of the car, handcuffed her and put a bag over her head; then, they took her to the police station. There they tortured her with electric shock, demanding that she slander her mother and declare that the mother had allegedly killed her neighbour.

Then the Dagestani woman was taken to another place, where they continued beating her up and threatened to shoot her dead. She was given a call to her mother, who asked her to sign everything they demanded; otherwise she would be raped and killed. The mother handed over 1.5 million roubles as ransom, but the law enforcers demanded another four million.

After the mother and daughter turned to the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service), the Khasavyurt law enforcers involved in the incident were searched, and drugs, weapons and ammunition were seized from them. The law enforcers had threatened to plant these drugs on the detained woman.

The four policemen were sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven to eight years; Lakhiyakhov was sentenced to 5.5 years conditionally. The Dagestani SC has upheld the terms, and replaced Lakhiyakhov's conditional term for a real one in a colony.