Journey for three pre-trial detention centers – Newspaper Kommersant No. 235 (7436) of 12/19/2022

The Constitutional Court will check the norm of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CPC), which does not allow challenging the decision of the investigator to transfer to another pre-trial detention center. The accused, who during the investigation had to move several times from one pre-trial detention center to another, complains about restrictions on access to justice. This practice helps to “isolate” the accused from lawyers, the expert notes.

The Constitutional Court (CC) will check the provisions of Art. 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which regulates the appeal against the actions of the investigator at the pre-trial stages of the process, is reported on the website of the Constitutional Court. The reason for the check was the complaint of Vladimir Sargsyan, a resident of Cherkessk, who in 2020 was suspected of a murder 20 years ago. He was sent to pre-trial detention center No. 2 in Pyatigorsk, the closest to Essentuki, where the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for the North Caucasus District, which was investigating the case, is located. A month later, the investigator decided to transfer the accused to the pre-trial detention center of Elista (Kalmykia) in order to avoid disclosure of the data of the preliminary investigation and contacts between the detainees. At the same time, all those arrested in this case were sent to Elista, notes Konstantin Kachalov, the applicant’s lawyer from Pyatigorsk.

Then his client was sent to Grozny: this time the reason for the transfer was a request from the Chechen Interior Ministry about the need to interrogate Mr. Sargsyan in connection with a criminal case under investigation there. But for two months, no investigative actions were carried out, but “the accused was tortured and forced to confess,” the lawyer claims. The investigation did not manage to get them, but now, the lawyer said, his client has become a defendant in another case – about robbery.

All this time, Mr. Kachalov challenged the decision of the investigator to transfer the person under investigation from one pre-trial detention center to another. According to the applicant, the reasons were far-fetched, but in reality he was thus pressured to obtain a confession. In addition, the remoteness of the detention of Vladimir Sargsyan from the place of preliminary investigation greatly complicated his communication with a lawyer and artificially limited the possibility of obtaining qualified legal assistance – a right that, in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, cannot be limited even by federal law, reminds Konstantin Kachalov. However, the Essentuki City Court refused to consider the complaint, considering that such decisions of the investigator were not subject to appeal. The appellate and cassation instances supported this position, as did the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

Now Mr. Sargsyan is already trying to prove in the Constitutional Court that the refusal of the court to check the decisions of the investigator to transfer him to different pre-trial detention centers violates his right to judicial protection, that is, it contradicts several articles of the Constitution at once. In addition, lawyer Kachalov notes, the law on the detention of suspects and defendants does not at all regulate the grounds and procedure for transferring from one pre-trial detention center to another – in contrast to the transfer from a pre-trial detention center to a temporary detention center.

Ruslan Vakhapov, the coordinator of the “Rus Sitting” organization (included in the register of foreign agents) in Yaroslavl, says that this is a standard practice of putting pressure on persons under investigation, known since Soviet times as “putting them on wheels”: it often accompanies “problematic” criminal cases when There is evidence, but there is no evidence. This practice consists in the fact that the suspect or the accused is continuously moved around the stage – this allows him to be isolated from lawyers and provides constant domestic problems. As a rule, such a “journey” ends with the signing of a confession, the expert adds.

Lawyer and former investigator of the investigative committee at the prosecutor’s office Andrei Grivtsov says he sees no obstacles to judicial review of the decision to transfer from one pre-trial detention center to another, although he himself has not encountered such a practice. Indeed, in Art. 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure explicitly states that not only the decisions of the investigator to refuse to initiate or terminate a criminal case, but also “other decisions” that “can cause damage to constitutional rights and freedoms”, as well as hinder citizens’ access to justice, can be appealed in court. , reminds the expert.

Anastasia Kornya