Kazakhstan: Police officers tortured six detainees to death
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Kazakhstan caught the Ministry of Internal Affairs lying; it repeatedly and categorically denied the use of torture on detainees after the January events.
Rizabek Ozharov, head of the Special Prosecutor Service under the Prosecutor General’s Office, said that cases of torture of persons under investigation were transferred to a specially created interdepartmental investigative group.
“Literally the other day we accepted criminal cases on the facts of the use of unauthorized interrogation methods. Previously, they were investigated by the Anti-Corruption Agency. Not all such cases have been handed over to us, but only the cases where serious consequences have been recorded, or rather, the death of the detainees,” Ozharov said.
According to him, as a result of police torture, six detainees died: two in the temporary detention facility of Almaty, three in the East Kazakhstan region, and one more in Taldykorgan.
“We also took a high-profile case of torture involving the use of an iron against another resident of Taldykorgan, who is still being held in a pre-trial detention center. According to these facts, investigations are ongoing, we will definitely inform about their results. But I can say that such crimes are not of a mass nature,” the Special Prosecutor noted.
Earlier, ACCA reported on the torture of Azamat Batyrbaev with an iron. In addition, we also reported on the torture of Zhasulan Amangeldinov with boiling water. However, according to Rizabek Ozharov, the court doesn’t investigate this case. The special group was also not interested in the case of lawyer Adilkhan Bedenbaev, whom the policemen beat with iron bars and tortured with stun gun.
Meanwhile, more and more information about people who were tortured by the police appears on social networks. Among them are Dauren Serikuly from Ust-Kamenogorsk, Ermek Abdreshov from Almaty, who lost his eyesight as a result of a grenade explosion, Mukhit Tugelbaev from Semey, blogger Abulkhair Komekov from Taraz, Talgat Meshitali from Kyzylorda (policemen stuck needles into his open wound) and many others.
It’s also worth recalling that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan has repeatedly refuted the information about the use of torture as untrue.
