News
Zakhar Zakurdayev, a resident of Omsk with a Group 3 disability, has been beaten by the police and fined 30 thousand rubles by a court for using a passport cover with the Ukrainian coat of arms, which he displayed at a doctor’s appointment, the human rights project Omsk Civil Association reports.
On March 15, Zakhar Zakurdayev was undergoing a medical examination. The narcologist began asking the man why his passport had a cover with the Ukrainian symbols on it, and whether he supported the “special operation”. Zakhar replied that people were dying in the war, and he did not like it.
On 28 March the police came to Zakurdaev's workplace and took him to the police station. Zakhar said he was beaten and forced to sign a confession that he had attended mass rallies and may have also been involved in “Ukrainian groups”, Azov in particular. In addition, he was forced to sign an apartment search protocol, and a protocol on “discrediting the Russian army” was drawn up in respect of him because of his passport cover with the Ukrainian symbols.
Zakurdaev was held in police custody until March29, and then released. He immediately sought medical assistance at the hospital to record the beatings.
In May, the Kuibyshev court fined Zakurdayev 30,000 rubles under the article on “discrediting the RF Armed Forces”. The ruling states that the man “deliberately put his passport with the Ukrainian coat of arms on the table” when he was at the doctor's appointment. In response to the question about his attitude towards Ukraine, he “became agitated, worked himself up to a state of nervousness, and in an aggressive manner argued about the course of the special military operation”.
“She [the doctor] told him to stop his utterings, but as he started exiting the office, he continued to speak negatively about V.V. Putin,” the court ruling says.
Several other members of the dispensary staff gave similar testimony against the man.