Path of Law

Statement about the videotaped torture

On the evening of November 21, a video was spread on the Internet depicting four supposedly policemen, humiliating and torturing a citizen in a police administrative building allegedly for extracting testimony.

Strictly condemning the incident, we demand the law enforcing bodies to take all necessary measures to establish the identities of the perpetrators and the victim, the circumstances of the crime (including time and causes), to prosecute the torturers, and to restore the rights of the victim.

At the same time, we call on those responsible for the development of public policy in the field of criminal justice to implement appropriate legislative safeguards to prevent incidents like this, such as the following.

1. Ensuring the alignment of legal regimes of “summoning and bringing the suspected offenders to the police” with  the legal regime of arrest.
2. Establishing the detainee’s refusal of  a advocate to be exclusively in the presence of a lawyer as an imperative requirement.
3. Ensuring a sufficient number of public defenders to effectively implement the regulation above.