Victim of Russian state torture awarded redress

This week, the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg awarded Aleksei Mihkeev, right, a victim of torture conducted by representatives of the Rusian state bureaucracy, 150.000 Euro in redress for the lasting injuries he has suffered. In a desparate attempt to escape further pain, Mihkeev jumped out out of a window, broke his back and was paralysed from his hips down. (29-JAN-06)

This article is based on two news releases, both by Kristin Roedland, released on the website of Amnesty International Norway 23 December 2005 and 27 January 2006. Photos of Mihkeev, Sangadzhiyeva and Wacko, also AI. Photo of Tusvik Bonde: Baard Brinchmann Lovvig. The articles have been translated and edited by HRH / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

It was in November last year that Amnesy International, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) and Human Rights house Foundation (HRH), who have all followed this case closely, learnt that a court in Nizhny Novgorod had found that the policemen Igor Somov and Nikolai Kosterin had driven Mihkeev to try to commit suicide. As a consequence of this fall, Mihkeev was paralysed. Prior to this, he had suffered severe torture, including beatings and electric shocks, all to make him confess to a crime he never committed.

-Writing again and again does work
Mihkeev’s lawyer Igor Kalyapin said back then that Mihkeev had been encouraged throughout by the knowledge that there were people out there following his case and showing concern, among other things through writing numerous letters of protest to local, national and international authorities and legal institutions. -It is ever so easy, says Ane Tusvik Bonde, left, Amnesty International’s coordinator for the Russian Federation and also HRH’s project manager for the entire Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, -to jump on the most recent cases. The final breakthrough in this case goes a long way to show that it does work to write, again and again, shre continues. Tusvik Bonde also says that Mihkeev has received several threatening requests from the Russian police to shut up, but even if he ignored them, nothing happened to him. In Tusvik Bonde’s opinion, this suggests that the international attention the Moihkeev case generated, also gave Mihkeev himself a certain degree of protection.

The verdict from the court in Strasbourg, issued 26 January, made it clear that the Russian state was found guilty in violations against Mhkeev on three counts. These are:
-Violation of the prohibition against torture (Article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention)
-Failing to conduct an efficient investigation (Also Article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention). Mikheev fell out of the window as far back as 19 September 1998.
-Failing to offer sufficient redress (Article 13 of the European Human Rights Convention). As a consequence of the fall, Mihkeev was permanently physically invalidated. His mother has since struggled to look after and care for him.

On these ground, the court awarded Mihkeev 150.000 Euro in compensation.

Read the whole verdict here.

-Stayer power was they key here
Inna Sangaszhiyeva and Aleksandra Wacko, left, both Amnesty activists, and with close ties to NHC and HRH, also stress the importance of stayer power in a case like this. The two of them have arranged two concerts in support of Mihkeev and raised more than 20.000 Norwegian kroner in the process. The revenue from the fist concert gave Mihkeev a stay at a Norwegian hospital specialising in physical recovery training, the second gave Mihkeev and his mother invaluable financial support towards their every life expenses. -Now we are planning a third concert, says Aleksandra, who was present during parts of Mihkeev’s trial in Nizhny Novgorod last autumn.

-A hero vs. a rotten system
It was the Norwegian Broadcasting Correspondent Hans Wilhelm Steinfeldt who first showed an interest in Mihkeev’s case and alerted Amnesty International and others to his situation. If Mihkeev had gone through surgery immediately after the accident, he probably wouldn’t have been paralysed today, Still, three hospital stays; two in Norway, one in the Russian Federation, has improved his life quality significantly. Adding to the international attention Steinfeldt was instrumental in conceiving, the Mihkeev case also grew to become a very hott issue within the Russian Federation, with Mihkeev becoming a symbolic representative of the loe individual standing up against what many Russian papers now call ‘a rotten system’.