In Kazakhstan, 13 prison officers were convicted of prisoners’ torture

In Pavlodar, the trial was completed on the case of former officers of the AП-162/3 colony accused of torturing 26 prisoners sent to Pavlodar from Karaganda region in June 2016. As a result, two prisoners died.

As ACCA already reported, 13 people were in the dock. 9 of them are former officers of the prison, the other four are the so-called “activists”; they are convicts who help the administration of the prison maintaining order in it. It is worth noting that initially in the case 15 people were held as defendants, however, two of them died during the investigation. For what reasons, two people under investigation died, is not reported.

During the investigation, it turned out that the accused forced the convicts to wash the toilet with their hands, and then wash their faces with these hands, crawl on all fours, squat 1200 times. Everyone who refused to obey orders was brutally beaten.

“The accused forced convicts to fall to the floor. They were ordered to follow on all fours to the toilet built into the floor, where convicts were forced to wash the toilet with their bare hands to humiliate and deprive themselves of self-respect and discrimination. With feces stained hands, they were forced to wipe their face,” the prosecutor told the court.

There were two episodes in this criminal case related to the death of prisoners. So, in February 2016, the famous Kazakh athlete Bakhytzhan Abdykarimov committed suicide. Abdykarimov, 45-year-old Vice-President of the Regional Judo Federation, multiple judo champion of Kazakhstan, was sentenced to five years in prison for causing grievous bodily harm to residents of Bayanaul. On February 26, 2016, Abdykarimov was found with his throat cut. In addition, there were a large number of cut wounds on his body: 46 on his stomach, 14 on his right forearm and 76 on his left forearm. Prosecutors found that due to constant torture and bullying, Abdykarimov tried to commit suicide three times before last one.

Three months later, in June 2016, in the same colony, 27 year-old Sain Muratbekov died from the beatings. As medical examiners found out, Muratbekov died due to traumatic hemorrhage in the brain.

In October 2017, a trial was held after the death of Abdykarimov. The Head of the prison was sentenced to 4 years in prison, with confiscation of property for abuse of power, which entailed serious consequences. Two other prison officers were found guilty of torture, abuse of power, and suicide. But, they received only 3.5 years of imprisonment conditionally. In April 2018, the Criminal Division of the Regional Court reviewed and changed the initial sentence against the prison officers due to the excessive leniency of punishment.

So, for two employees, the suspended sentence was replaced by the real one with the sentence being served in the institution of the penal system of medium security. In addition, the court increased the sentence from 3.5 to 6 years. In relation to the Head of the prison, the sentence remained in force, although the confiscation of property was excluded.

In March 2019, a trial of torture of 26 prisoners began. It is worth noting that two of the defendants tried to commit suicide right in the process. As ACCA reported, on August 6, ex-officers of the AП-162/3 colony Talipov and Saraev during the debate, they cut themselves in the neck with a sharp metal object. However, the suicide attempt was unsuccessful: the victims were immediately hospitalized. The wounds were healed and they were returned to the pre-trial detention center.

After the defendants’ well-being improved, the process was resumed again. The verdict was announced today. All defendants were found guilty of torture of prisoners and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 5 to 7 years. In addition, $1300 will be recovered from each four convicts in favor of the injured party – the relatives of Bakhytzhan Abdykarimov.