A court in the Russian city of Kazan has ruled that the government must pay a man 80,000 rubles ($1,500) in damages after he was tortured at an infamous police department, a local human rights organization said in a statement Tuesday.
Oskar Krylov was one of several men who was raped with a bottle by policemen while in custody at the Dalny police precinct in an attempt to force him to confess to a crime. The shocking abuse came to light in 2012 after a 52-year-old man died of injuries sustained during a similar attack, in a case that highlighted widespread lawlessness and corruption among Russian police officers.
Krylov's lawyer Igor Sholokhov said his client, who was 22 when he was detained and tortured by police in 2011, had sought more than 10 times the amount of compensation awarded by the district court Tuesday. The lawyer said in a statement on the Kazan Rights Center website that they would appeal the decision in Tatarstan's Supreme Court.
Tuesday's verdict marks the first case of financial compensation being awarded to victims of the systematic abuse at Dalny, the statement said.
Eight former police officers in Tatarstan received lengthy prison terms last year ranging from two years to 14 years over the abuse scandal. Some of the sentences were reduced by up to two years earlier this year.
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