ECtHR awards compensation to Chechen resident in police torture case

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) awarded 33,800 euros in compensation to Mikhail Vladovsky, a resident of Chechnya, in a case on his torture by the police, the ECtHR reported.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in 2006, the Prosecutor's Office of Chechnya instituted a case on torture of Mikhail Vladovsky, a resident of the region. Policemen tortured him for refusing to confirm his alleged participation in a terror act, the "Committee Against Torture" (CaT) reported.

According to the ECtHR's press release, in 2004, Mikhail Vladovsky was found guilty of illegal possession of an artillery shell and sentenced to two years of imprisonment. In summer of 2004, the man was tortured in Grozny. The law enforcers demanded from the detainee to confess to his alleged participation in terror acts, murders, and robberies. According to the complainant, the law enforcers put a plastic bag on his head to strangle him and beat him with truncheons and water bottles.

After Mikhail Vladovsky had undergone torture, medical officers diagnosed him with a broken leg. The policemen said that the man fell down the stairs.

When Mikhail Vladovsky had been discharged from a hospital, he was tortured again. Then he opened his veins to stop the torture. Meanwhile, the man was accused of participation in terror acts, robberies, storage and manufacture of weapons, and an attack on law enforcers, but the court acquitted him on all the charges.