Convict Piotr Kuchura urges Mahiliou Prosecutor to “have the courage”

Piotr Kuchura urges Mahiliou Prosecutor to react to a failure to launch a timely probe into his poisoning in penal colony No. 15, which made it impossible to punish the perpetrators.

According to the prisoner’s wife, Liudmila Kuchura, in late February her husband filed a complaint with the Prosecutor of Mahiliou, after he realized that it would be almost impossible to punish those responsible after a year of waiting for a reply from the Investigative Committee.

Ms. Kuchura told about the main points of the complaint, in which Piotr Kuchura outlined his views on the illegal actions of the prison administration.

First of all, the convict recalls that the probe was formally launched only 9 months after the accident, and only after the numerous complaints by his wife. 14 months have passed since the day of the alleged poisoning (and over a year since the first complaint), and over the time a decision of the Mahiliou department of the Investigative Committee to refuse to institute criminal proceedings has been canceled five times. Piotr Kuchura says all these checks were extremely formal, since he has never been examined by a doctor.

He further tells the Prosecutor that he was actually barred from fully exercising his rights during the probe and appealing its results. Moreover, his wife, who acted as the claimant and won the dispute, began to be ignored by the Investigative Committee, excluding her from correspondence without any legal justification. Piotr Kuchura writes that he can hire a lawyer, but it is, firstly, means additional costs, and, secondly, he trusts his wife in terms of persistence in defending his rights.

The prisoner is convinced that the main reason which made it almost impossible to punish the prison employees was the delay of one year. During the time, he was seeking an unbiased decision in his case. And it was this time that helped “erase” the traces of poisoning in his body. Therefore, he poses a logical question to the Prosecutor: who will be punished, if ever, for a delay in launching the probe, and whether the Prosecutor's Office will finally issue at least some order to the Investigative Committee, which had ignored his wife’s letters for six months?

As it follows from the decision not to institute criminal proceedings, the few prisoners and many employees of penal colony No. 15 that were interviewed by the investigators deny the fact of the use of chlorine. It also said that that experts had refused to examine the prisoner’s health, although they earlier argued that bleach could leave no traces in the body. That is, it is now impossible to prove the use of ill-treatment, sums up the prisoner recalling that an examination was appointed but nevercarried out.

Calling into question the effectiveness of the actions of the Investigative Committee during the probe, Piotr Kuchura asks the Prosecutor a series of questions. Who doubted that prisoners would never give testimony incriminating someone from the prison staff? Was someone from the officers for at least a day suspended during the check? How can such a probe be regarded objective? He insists on the institution of criminal proceedings, which allows to arrange a confrontation in order to remove inconsistencies between the testimony of prisoners, prison staff and his words.

The prisoner is especially outraged by the situation with the examinations: he cannot understand what prevents studying his medical records. Do the investigators hope to force the prison doctors admit that they saw traces of chemical burns and left Mr. Kuchura in jail without treatment?

“Yes, the authorized state bodies will never be possible in such circumstances to prove the guilt of the officials who, which is obvious to me. Have at least the courage to admit the fact of ill-treatment against me, a disabled, elderly man,” quotes Liudmila Kuchura her husband’s letter to the Prosecutor.

In his complaint, Piotr Kuchura asks the Mahiliou Prosecutor to cancel an order to dismiss the criminal case and to take measures of prosecutorial response to the employees of the Investigative Committee responsible for the delay in opening an investigation.

In addition, the prisoner has sent similar complaints about the actions of the Investigative to the Prosecutor General and the Chairman of the Investigative Committee.