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| Russia |
| Russian cops: good as a hole in the head |
| 2004-07-30 |
| EFL Until recently German Galdetsky, a 19-year-old Muscovite, was a promising young university student with a passion for computers. This week he sat in a neurological hospital with a hole in his head as his mother struggled to get him to relearn the basics of life - how to eat, walk and talk. Doctors treating him say the fact that he is alive at all is a small miracle. On March 25 an assailant fired a pneumatic gun into the side of his temple. Mr Galdetsky's apparent crime was to launch an investigation into a ring of Moscow policemen who had allegedly been sexually abusing teenage girls on the capital's metro. Mr Galdetsky's shooting is only one of a string of recent cases in which Russian police are alleged to have beaten, raped or killed victims. Charges have also been brought against serving and former policemen for corruption and mafia-related activities. Experts say reported crimes are only the tip of the iceberg. Few victims report crimes committed by the police for fear of retribution. Despite pledges to clean up the police, the culture of immunity that dominated in Soviet times is creeping back under President Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, young opposition activists who demonstrated outside the Lubyanka, base of the KGB and its successor the FSB, said they were taken in and beaten. Mr Galdetsky's first contact with the police came on Feb 8. He was with a girlfriend, Olga, 17, at the Pushkin Square metro in central Moscow when two policemen walked up and told her to go with them to their booth. There, according to statements German later gave to a local newspaper, they told her to undress, threatening to beat her if she did not. When she began to cry, Mr Galdetsky demanded to know what was happening. According to his testimony, the police began to taunt Olga. One said: "Open your legs and show him that you are a whore." Mr German took a photograph of the police with his mobile phone, but they grabbed him and forced him to delete it. At first the police complaints authority refused to take Mr Galdetsky seriously. Later they told him that if he collected enough evidence on his own they might pursue the case. So he put out an appeal on a Russian website asking for other girls who had been sexually harassed by policemen to come forward. Many said they were too scared, but six agreed to give their names. Two of them, who have since gone into hiding, said they resisted the unwanted advances of two policemen and were then imprisoned for 15 days on charges of obstructing a police investigation. When Mr Galdetsky had compiled his dossier he sent it to the complaints commission. Days later he was attacked. The assailant took his mobile phone and an exercise book detailing the information he had collected but left his money. Since that day Mr Galdetsky has had three major brain operations. |
| Posted by:Bulldog |