Court: To Recover Compensation From MIA In Favor Of The Ptsichkins At Public Treasury Expense

The Ministry of Internal Affairs will pay $ 18 000 to Ihar Ptsichkin’s family.

Just yesterday, human rights activists reported that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus applied for explanations to the Zavodski district court of Minsk regarding the execution of the court decision on the moral and material damage compensation for the family of Ihar Ptsichkin, who died in the remand prison #1. The reason for the appeal was the circumstance that the Ministry does not receive appropriate budgetary financing. And the amount is considerable, according to the "Viasna" HRC.

Back on March 23, the Zavodski district court of Minsk resolved to surcharge Bn 30K of compensation of moral damage and Bn 6K of compensation of material damage from the Ministry of the Interior in favour of the mother and the sister of Ihar Ptsichkin, who died in the remand prison.

On August 22, the Zavodski district court of Minsk tried to establish once again who and how should pay compensation to Ihar Ptsichkin’s mother and sister.

Official representative of the Interior Ministry Kiryl Militsyn supported the position of the Ministry in court, having referred to technical difficulties which occur when fulfilling the court’s decision. He clarified that the Ministry did not evade payments. It’s just this issue “got stuck” in the Ministry of Finance, which handles the treasury. It is necessary to be specified there: the source of financing is the "treasury of the Republic of Belarus".

Lawyer of the human rights center "Viasna" Pavel Sapelka, who was present at the court hearing, believes that when the court passed the previous decision on awarding compensation, the legal norm was not quite accurate:

"At the time when Zhanna Ptsichkina submitted a lawsuit to the court, the ground for recovering compensation was article 938 of the Civil Code, which provides for liability for damage caused by employees of state bodies. The court made decision on the basis of another legal norm, which provides for the responsibility of the employer for the actions of their employee.

It seems to me that this is the root of the problem with the execution of the court decision, because under such an order theoretically the Ministry of Finance should not finance the implementation of such a decision. But I hope that the court will somehow fix the situation and Zhanna Ptsichkina will finally receive her compensation, which she has been waiting for five months already."

After taking a time-out, the court decided: to specify in the documents a more precise wording regarding the payment of compensation. Namely: "to recover from the Ministry of Internal Affairs compensation in favor of the Ptsichkins at the expense of the treasury of the Republic of Belarus".

Important to note, Minsk resident Ihar Ptsichkin died on August 4, 2013 after several days of imprisonment in the "Valadarka" remand prison, where he was serving 3 months of arrest for driving a car without a license. In the medical unit of the institution, "measures of physical restraint in the form of fixation with straps" were applied to him. In this state, Ptsichkin spent more than 20 hours before his death. The prison administration stated that the young man died of a heart disease, but relatives found bruises on the body and signs of physical damage.