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Investigative Committee institutes criminal proceedings over police torture allegations by elderly guard in Minsk

The Minsk city office of the Investigative Committee of Belarus has instituted criminal proceedings over a complaint by Vasil Sarochyk, a Minsk resident who accuses police officers of beating him up, the Committee's spokesman, Pavel Traulka, told BelaPAN.

Investigators currently work to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident, Mr. Traulka said, adding that a series of forensic examinations would be carried out.

Mr. Sarochyk, an elderly man who works at a parking lot as a guard, speaks about the incident in a video posted on November 21 on the website of a prisoners' rights organization called Platforma.

According to Mr. Sarochyk, a uniformed policeman and a plainclothesman approached him at the parking lot on Malinina Street on November 14 and announced, without introductions or explanations, that he would be taken to the Leninski district police station.

The man was kept in the station's waiting area for about one hour and then led into Room No. 235 for a questioning.

According to Mr. Sarochyk, officer Bahdanowskaya handcuffed him and started beating him, saying that he should confess to stealing gravestones stored at the parking lot, diesel fuel and car accumulators and to repeatedly robbing retail kiosks at the nearby Svelta market.

The woman became even more violent when Mr. Sarochyk said that he did not even know what she was talking about. She and other officers kicked him and hit him on the head with truncheons, shouting obscenities and threatening him with death. Every time the man lost his consciousness, they revived him with cold water.

Mr. Sarochyk refused to make any confessions, but, after six hours of torture, finally signed a paper that he was too weak to read. The officers then stopped beating him and told him to go home.

However, the man went to City Clinical Hospital No. 10 to have his injuries documented. When doctors refused to examine him without a special paper from the Leninski district police station, he filed a complaint with the Leninski District Prosecutor's Office and asked Platforma for help. Platforma notified the Prosecutor General's Office, the interior ministry and the Investigative Committee of the incident.

At the end of November, Mr. Sarochyk told Platforma that police were trying to pressure him into withdrawing his complaint. Police officers visit his parking lot and phone the man, inviting him the Leninski district police station to come for an interview.

Platforma leader Andrey Bandarenka claimed at a news conference that people were subjected to torture on a regular basis in Room No. 235 at the Leninski district police station in Minsk.

According to Mr. Bandarenka, Platforma conducted its own investigation and established that officers in the number 235 room were notoriously abusive. The organization has found two other people who had experienced ordeals similar to that of Mr. Sarochyk, but they refused at the last moment to participate in the news conference, Mr. Bandarenka said.

Platforma is ready to get the Investigative Committee in touch with these people to check these allegations, he said. One of these people was actually convicted on a false charge, he said.