Police refuse to apologize to Kuban resident for illegal detention

The detention of Evgeny Skidanov, a resident of Kuban (Krasnodar Territory) in 2019 has been recognized as illegal, but the police would not apologize. Investigators refused to open a case on Skidanov's torture for 15 times.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Evgeny Skidanov, a resident of the village of Vyselki in the Krasnodar Territory, sought a check into the initiation of a criminal case against the law enforcers who tortured him at the local police station.

Skidanov was detained in November 2019 in connection with the disappearance in January 2014 of Natalia Grozina, a farm worker in the Vyselkovsky District. According to Skidanov, he was hung on a crowbar, tortured with electricity, suffocated with a bag, and hit in the face.

To justify Skidanov's detention in 2019, policemen drew up a protocol against him for disobeying a policeman. In 2023, the court declared the man's detention illegal, the "Team against Torture" (TaT)* has reported.

Human rights defenders have noted that the law on the police obliges the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) to apologize for illegal prosecution, but the bosses of the Vyselkovsky ROVD (District Interior Division) refused to apologize, citing that the guilty policemen had not worked at the ROVD for a long time, and that the head thereof at that time was another person.

Since 2019, Evgeny Skidanov has been kept at the SIZO (pre-trial prison) on charges of murdering his girlfriend. He denied his involvement in the crime.

In January 2021, the "Mediazona"** included Skidanov's case into the list of typical torture cases in Kuban, indicating that local law enforcers regularly use this method to extract the necessary confessions from detainees.

*The "Team against Torture" (TaT, formerly the "Committee against Torture" – CaT) was created by the lawyers who had earlier worked for the CaT, which was included into the register of the NCOs performing the functions of foreign agents.

**On September 29, 2021, the Ministry of Justice of Russia included the LLC "ZP" (the legal entity that had established the "Mediazona") into the list of media outlets-foreign agents.