Russia’s Tyumen region Investigative Committee has refused to initiate a criminal case on torture of Russian anti-fascist Yury Neznamov, the corresponding document was published on Telegram channel Tyumen Case.
The document is dated 17 November. It states that the Investigative Committee did not receive “information indicating that any crime was committed against Y.E. Neznamov”.
During the proceedings, the investigators interviewed Neznamov. He once again described in full detail how he had been beaten during an interrogation on 1 September and then tortured in the early hours of 2 September — threatened with being shot and raped, suffocated with a plastic bag, tortured with electricity, and waterboarded.
The investigators also interviewed two employees of Russia’s Centre for Combating Extremism (Centre E) and detective Rimaryov. All of them said that no torture had been used on Neznamov and his testimony had been given without coercion.
Still, Telegram channel Tyumen Case notes that all three law enforcement agents talk about the events that took place later in the day on 2 September, after the overnight torture. That was when detective Rimarev arrived at the centre to get Neznamov to sign the record of interrogation. Anti-fascist Neznamov said that by the time of Rimarev’s arrival the torture had ended.
The two employees of the centre claim that their testimony recounts the events that took place on 1 September, but they talk about the same events as the ones described by detective Rimarev. Both the detective and anti-fascist claim that the aforementioned events took place on 2 September.
“Thus, the Investigative Committee has not given an answer to the main question: where was Yury Neznamov from 31 August until 2 September and what was done to him in that time frame. This is why we consider the conducted investigation to be a formality and incomplete, pre-emptively destined to be a ‘success’,” the authors of Telegram channel Tyumen Case say.
Several days ago, it was reported that the City of Tyumen Investigative Committee did not respond to claims by five other figures of interest of the “Tyumen case”, despite the time period allocated for responding to a claim that a crime has been committed — 30 days — passing.
Six anti-fascists and anarchists — Kirill Brik, Deniz Aydin, Daniil Chertykov, Nikita Oleynik, Roman Paklin, and Yury Neznamov — were detained in the cities of Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, and Surgut on 6 September, they were accused of creating a terrorist community and being part of it. They were also suspected of attempting to blow up a power plant with 300 grams of explosives, as per 66.ru. All six men said to have been tortured in law enforcement structures. Their case is referred to as “Tyumen case”.
