Victims interrogated instead of guilty ones
After complaints on the policemen, investigators interrogated not the guilty ones, but the victims.
Several young people, who were forcibly detained in Minsk during a meeting with an expert on nuclear energy Georgy Lepin, complained to the prosecutor office on the illegal actions of police officers.
The verification of complaints is carried out by the office of the Committee of Investigation of the Zavadskі district.
On May 27 near the stadium "Tractor" in Minsk police detained a group of young people who were meeting with the doctor of technical sciences, a specialist on nuclear power Georgy Lepin. Twenty-one people got to the police department of Moskovski district. Some of them were beaten and threatened to file report and imprison them "for a day". Later, after all the detainees were fingerprinted, they were released.
It turned out that the investigators, decided to interrogate the victims themselves. For example, during the questioning of a detained on May 27, the investigator Alexander Rabizav instead of clarifying the circumstances of detention and unlawful actions of the police, began to ask about who helped to make complaints to the prosecutor's office, whether he is a member of any political party or organization, does he know any of the detainees, what’s his attitude towards non-nuclear energy, etc.
Another injured woman also told about her meeting with the investigator: "A strange feeling when you sit and talk with the investigator in the same building where we were kept after detention, and sometimes it seemed that one of those SWAT members could enter at any time and say "Hi, how are you?".
The talk with the investigator left a bad impression. "He wanted to know, if I knew any of the detainees, how I got to the event. It was evident that the investigator does not intend to investigate the fact of the detention".
Human rights activists connected this attitude to allegations about misconduct by police officers or the Committee of Investigation to the fact that verification of complaints is conducted by a Committee of Investigation itself. It decides to initiate a criminal case or not. Previously this right was given to the prosecutor's office, which gave hope to the applicants that the departmental interests will not have a determining role in reviewing and decision-making process.
