10:57, 28 January 2008

Ombudsman: Volgograd militia illegally stops criminal cases

Mikhail Tarantsov, Ombudsman for the Volgograd Region, has expressed, while assessing the operation of the Regional GUVD (Chief Interior Headquarters) in 2007, his concern with the fact that the number of justified claims of Volgograd residents to the activities of law enforcement bodies does not go down.

"First of all, these are citizens' complaints against unjustified refusals to initiate criminal cases, unjustified suspensions or terminations of criminal cases," Mr Tarantsov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to his story, this practice is confirmed by a plenty of official answers from the bodies of the prosecutor's office, where the Ombudsman had applied in the interests of applicants.

Mikhail Tarantsov has noted that many complaints are on the work of district militiamen. An example is lack of due operative and effective reaction to applications of ordinary citizens. Complaints are incessant against application of violence to citizens by militiamen to get confession of guilt from suspects or defendants in the course of investigation.

Author: Vyacheslav Yashchenko, CK correspondent