Briefing Paper Drafted by Center "Demos" for the May 2007 Russia-EU Human Rights Consultations

In the previous two years, the European Court of Human Rights delivered judgments on four Russian complaints on incidents of police torture with the purpose of obtaining confession or information.

Obviously, implementation of those judgments on the level of general measures calls for cocrete steps aimed at the prevention of torture in Russia and particularly at the increase of effectiveness of investigation into complains of torture.

As regards torture prevention, it is evident that law enforcement officials should be provided with resources necessary to perform their duties effectively without neglect of the rule of law and rights and freedoms of people. Most importantly, it is necessary to raise professionalism of the law enforcement officials through specialized training programmes focused on only on human rights and fundamental freedoms but also on contemporary methods of crime solution and collection of evidence.

Undoubtedly, training of the law enforcements officials should be accompanied by the improvement of their working conditions for rank and file personnel. Those steps can prevent most qualified personnel from leaving the law enforcement bodies, which represents a very serious problem for the Ministry of Interior at the moment. Additionally, it is necessary to continue securing the law enforcement bodies with material resources. Certain progress has been made in the recent years with regard to supplying the police force with transport and office equipment. Nevertheless, the police still suffer a lack of specialized criminalistic instruments and facilities requisite for timely collection of sufficient material evidence. Police work is also undermined by the critical lack of modern expert laboratories within the law enforcement system as well as outside of it.

Improvement of access of detainees to timely high-quality legal assistance may be an important step in torture prevention. It is necessary to note that the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation is presently conducting an experiment in three pilot regions aimed at improving the situation with access to gratis legal assistance. Such initiatives need support and may benefit from international cooperation.

Another important means of prevention of torture in the law enforcement is to develop and implement a system of public control over places of temporary detention under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior (such experiments are already conducted in several Russian regions and need support and promotion).

It is significant that all the judgments of the European Court on torture complaints from Russia stress the lack of effective investigation into allegations of torture on the national level.

Russian and international experts believe that one of the key reasons behind ineffective investigation into complaints on the use of torture by law enforcement personnel is the conflict of interests within the public prosecutor's office. In Russia, the public prosecutor's office is responsible for crime investigation, represents the state accusation in courts, and also exhorts supervision over observance of individual rights and freedoms by law enforcement officials in their work. The latter function inter alia includes control over legality of investigation and thus enters into conflict with the responsibility for conducting investigation. In practice, crime investigation and support the state accusation in courts prevail over the supervision over observance of people rights and freedoms in the work of the prosecutor's office.

This conflict of functions and interests has been noted as a problem by such important domestic and international official actors as the Council on the Development of civil society institutions and human rights under the Russian President and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.

In order to secure effective investigation into torture complaints it is highly advisable to eliminate the aforesaid conflict of functions within the prosecutors’ office. There may be different specific ways to resolve that problem, but it is evident that the same state agency should not be responsible for investigating crimes and introducing state accusation, as well as for supervising over observance of people rights and freedoms in the work of the law enforcement and looking into torture complaints in the course of investigation.