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Bodily injuries were inflicted on legal ground, to refuse the medical aid

20.10.2004   
Evgeniy Bayramov, Aleksey Svetikov, Severodonetsk
A man, who was beaten during the detention by the officers of the Severodonetsk town militia directorate on 10 June 2004 and is kept until now in the Rubezhnoye preliminary prison, cannot get the medical aid.
Igor Zubenko, who was detained by the officers of the Severodonetsk town militia directorate on 10 June 2004 and is kept until now in the Rubezhnoye preliminary prison, cannot get the medical aid. He has the broken head and, maybe, fractured fingers.

By the words of witnesses, defendant Zubenko was present at the court sitting on 21 June 2004 with the non-bandaged and bleeding wound on the back of his head, marks of handcuffs on his wrists and swollen hands.

During the court sitting I. Zubenko turned to judge Andreev with the complaint about not-rendering of medical aid to him. According to his words, the nurse of the Rubezhnoye preliminary prison could not render him the proper medical aid, and the workers of the Rubezhnoye town militia precinct refused to take him to a hospital. The reaction of judge Andreev was the following: he said that he could not call a motor ambulance and advised to solve all problems in the Rubezhnoye preliminary prison.

The arrest was caused by non-appearance of Zubenko in court, so the preventive measure was changed from the written undertaking not to leave a place to holding in custody. By the words of an eyewitness of the detention, the defendant was arrested when he was asleep.

Officer of the Severodonetsk prosecutor’s office Zinchenko commented the fact of the detention to Zubenko’s wife E. Chuyko. He explained that Zubenko resisted, so the special group of the Severodonetsk town militia precinct had to use force.

According to the response, which we have obtained today from the Severodonetsk prosecutor’s office, “Zubenko got the bodily injuries as a result of his own carelessness and the measures of physical influence that were applied to him by the officers of the Severodonetsk town precinct in order to overcome his resistance to the legal demands of the militiamen”. This logic is traditional for militia and prosecutor’s office: nobody beat him, he fell down, and if even he was beaten, then only according to laws.

When E. Chuyko learned about the detention of her husband, she, on 10 June about 15:20, “took by storm” the building of the Severodonetsk town precinct (she was not allowed there) and saw Igor in a sad state: with the bandaged head and handcuffed.

On 12 June Chuyko turned to the public reception office of the CVU, where the application was prepared with the demand to conduct the forensic expertise of Zubenko. Alas, we have no results of the expertise to this very day.

By evidences of a witness of the detention, Zubenko was taken into custody about 11 a.m. on 10 June 2004, and the medical aid was rendered to him by doctors of motor ambulance at 14:58 of the same day. We do not know why the officers of the town precinct did not want to call the motor ambulance for the man, who was wounded during the detention.

The further actions of Severodonetsk law-enforcers were rather alarming. Zubenko was transported to the Rubezhnoye preliminary prison, and from 11 to 22 June neither his wife nor advocate could break the resistance of Rubezhnoye militiamen and meet with the detained.

So, on 17 June the militiamen ignored the permission for meeting given to the wife of the detained by Severodonetsk judge Andreev. K. Fateev, the deputy head of the Rubezhnoye town militia directorate, permitted the meeting, but the workers of the prison did not admit the women to her husband, since, they said, head of the prison Krutikov had carried away the keys and they could not unlock the cell. The officer-on-duty and the deputy head of the Rubezhnoye town militia precinct said the same to N. Metelkina, a lawyer of the Lugansk branch of the CVU, who phoned to Rubezhnoye. The meeting did not take place, and the parcel was not accepted. The prohibition of the meeting deprived us of the possibility to render the legal aid to Zubenko, who, most likely, was tortured at that time.

On 22 June Chuyko turned to the prosecutor of Rubezhnoye with the request about the permission to pass a parcel to her husband. The prosecutor agreed to help and, in her presence, phoned to the Rubezhnoye town precinct. Yet, the officer-on-duty of the Rubezhnoye precinct again refused to accept the parcel. Only the personal visit of the Rubezhnoye prosecutor to the town precinct solved this problem. However, the meeting was not permitted all the same.

P.S. According to the information given by E. Chuyko in the course of a talk in the Rubezhnoye town precinct, Zubenko has already written the explanation addressed to the prosecutor, in which he communicated that he had gotten the traumas not as a result of detention, but because of fall from stairs. Today the Severodonetsk town militia directorate has refused to render the information to the editorial board of the newspaper “Tretiy sektor” under the pretext that service investigation has been conducted. Yet, yesterday the prosecutor’s office refused to start the criminal case against the militia officers because of absence of corpus delicti.

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