His family’s lawyers were not allowed to attend the trial of the murder of a man who was tortured in the Irkutsk police department

Representatives of the family of Sergei Strunchinsky, who was killed in 2016, were not allowed to attend the hearing. A former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Maxim Krugovoy is accused of his murder. The first preliminary hearing was held in the Kuibyshevsky District Court of Irkutsk. However, neither the listeners nor the lawyers of the injured party could take part in it, writes “Taiga.info”.

Human rights activist Svyatoslav Khromenkov reported this to the publication. In addition, according to him, the defense of Krugovoy filed a petition to deprive Strunchinsky’s sister Marina Usimova of the victim status. She was unable to attend the meeting, as she was hospitalized with suspected coronavirus.

In February 2019, three police officers were found guilty of exceeding their powers (part 3 of article 286 of the Criminal Code). According to the materials of the investigation, Alexander Krivoshein, Maxim Krugovoy and Sergey Tarasov on September 17, 2015 at the police station demanded that Strunchinsky change his testimony in the case of his brother Anton Frolov, a murder suspect. After refusing, he was beaten with a chair, and he was forced to wipe the blood off the floor on his own.

Then they began to strangle him with a plastic bag, beat him in the solar plexus, poured boiling water on his head. After the torture, Strunchinsky was released, but was warned that his daughter and wife would be “visited” if he told someone about what had happened.

Strunchinsky wrote a statement about torture, a criminal case was opened. On April 2, 2016, his body was found in Angara near Irkutsk. All the persons involved in the case at that time were under recognizance not to leave.

As the newspaper writes, the criminal case on the murder was received by the Kuibyshevsky District Court of Irkutsk at the end of October, it will be considered by the jury.

Krugovoy’s statement of accusation says that he “acting on the basis of personal hostile relations, deliberately hit Strunchinsky on the body, then plunged his head into water and deliberately squeezed his neck with his hands until the latter stopped showing signs of life.”

Human rights activist Khromenkov notes that the investigation was unable to identify Krugovoy’s accomplices, although they knew the make and license plate of the car in which Strunchinsky was taken away.

Earlier, in the case of abuse of power, Krivoshein and the Circular Court sentenced him to four and three years in a general regime colony, and Tarasov received a three-year suspended sentence.