Correspondents of “Chronicles of Turkmenistan” report that in the evening of 8 October a fight broke out in the city of Turkmenabat. Its participants were detained and transported to the velayat police department to be placed into pre-trial detention cells.
The police officers found out that one of the detainees (Chronicles of Turkmenistan has his personal data) was convicted for robbery and pardoned in 2018.
There was an unsolved сase related to the robbery in the residential district of Uchpunkt Turkmenabad in September 2018, in the criminal investigation department.The detainee was held in the cell for 12 days.
All this time he was beaten with rubber batons filled with water, had electrodes attached to his tongues and genitals to force him sign a confessionary statement for committing a robbery.
The man refused to sign any papers. On the 12th day the detainee felt much worse and the police officers, out of fear that he might die, summoned his relatives and allowed to take the man home.
Since the man was in a critical condition he was taken to a municipal hospital where healthcare practitioners identified numerous torture marks.When it transpired that the police officers are held accountable, the chief physician called the police department and said that they are obliged to carry out the expertise and put together a medical assessment report, enter the data in the medical record and prescribe a course of treatment to the patient.
The executives of the velayat police department contacted the public prosecutor’s office to force the doctors to refuse to register documents and get the patient admitted to hospital.
The man who suffered from the arbitrariness of the police officers is at home and is undergoing a private course of treatment.
It appears that despite the recent replacement of the Interior Minister the investigation methods used by law enforcement officers have remained unchanged. The attempts to coerce confessionary statement from suspects remain the main tool for investigating officers.