Russian police on patrol outside the Kremlin in Moscow, 6 April 2025. Photo: EPA / Maxin Shipenkov
A resident of the Russian city of Nalchik in the North Caucasus has unsuccessfully attempted to report his torture by police on 34 separate ocassions over seven years, Russian human rights group Team Against Torture revealed on Wednesday.
According to Timur Zhambekov, law enforcement officers repeatedly beat him, tortured him using electric shocks, and placed a bag over his head in attempts to make him confess to a crime he did not commit.
In March 2018, Zhambekov was detained and put in a police car where officers began to hit him “aboгt thirty times in the head, and over a hundred times on my body”, he said.
He was then taken to the Kabardino-Balkaria Interior Ministry where the torture continued. “I was beaten on my hands and feet, there were several blows with a fire extinguisher,” Zhambekov said.
“They periodically used electric shocks, attaching the wires to my thumbs and my fingers, sometimes they attached them to my earlobes,” he continued, adding that after several hours, he gave in and confessed.
Despite the fact that forensic medical experts found bruises, a broken rib and abrasions on Zhambekov’s body, a complaint he filed with the regional Investigative Committee was ignored, no attempt to inspect the scene was made, nor were the police officers involved in his detention questioned.
Over seven years, the Investigative Committee refused to open a criminal case into the matter, despite Zhambekov attempting on 34 separate occasions to initiate proceedings against the policemen. He was subsequently convicted of the theft he had confessed to under torture and was sentenced to five years in a penal colony.
