"Beat His Head on Concrete": Security Forces Beat a 16-Year-Old Teenager to Coma

A minor from Minsk was taken to intensive care directly from the Partisansky police department in Minsk.

On the evening of August 12, 16-year-old Minsker Timur M. went to his friend's house but did not return home to spend the night. The worried parents could not contact him, and a friend of the teenager said that Timur was not with him. Artem M., Timur's older brother, told "Belsat" about this.

As it turned out much later, the 16-year-old was detained by people in civilian clothes. "They arrived on a small bus. They jumped out with truncheons and began to beat and grab everyone who came to hand. The detainees were dragged and stacked on top of each other on the bus. Later they sat on the detainees and did not stop beating them. One of the detainees, out of pain, even defecated under himself," said his sister Yekaterina from Timur's words.

They frightened the detainees: "Now, we will take you to the forest and shoot you there."

"Timur told me that he was on the bus and prayed that they would not be shot," his sister says.

The detainees were taken to the Partizansky District Department of Internal Affairs of Minsk. There they continued to be bullied. One of the detainees - a 14-year-old teenager - was beaten in the groin. The other man was laid down facing the floor, a truncheon was inserted into the anus and kicked, driving him deeper into the rectum.

They put Timur on his knees, pulled his head back by the hair, and thrust a truncheon into his mouth. They beat his head on concrete, beat him in the eyes with the edge of the truncheon, on the sides, pressed an electric shock to his heels. The policemen forced him to sing the official anthem of Belarus, and when he refused, they beat him even harder.

"Timur noticed that if someone shouted, showed that he was in pain, they would beat him even more. It seemed to Timur that he had been in the police station for a whole day, but only a couple of hours had passed," said Ekaterina.

The teenager became very ill. He could not move and began to choke. Timur remembered how one of the executioners turned to the other: "Captain Gushchenko, what are we going to do with this weak man?"

The captain just grunted and said that the young man should be thrown into the basement: "Let him die ..." But another of the security officials objected and called an ambulance.

In the ambulance, Timur was accompanied by OMON - a man in a black uniform and a balaclava. The security officer shook his fist in front of the young man's face and hissed: "If you peep something, we will find you, and you are a dead man." Then the OMON officer swung and hit the young man in the jaw with all his might - he lost consciousness.

Timur was taken to the 3rd city children's clinical hospital. Doctors recorded a fracture of the upper jaw, diagnosed a closed craniocerebral trauma, a palate torn with a truncheon, numerous bruises on the body. The guy's condition was very serious; he was convulsing. The doctors decided to put him into an artificial coma.

As soon as Timur was taken out of his coma on the evening of August 13, policemen tried to get into his room almost immediately, said the victim's brother, Artem. "We will film the beatings, document Timur's condition, and draw up a complaint to the prosecutor's office," he said.

According to Timur's sister Ekaterina, the guy is still in intensive care; he cannot open his eyes, which are swollen after the beating, he is constantly nauseous, he cannot eat because of a broken jaw; his whole body hurts, and the teenager himself is very intimidated and in a depressed state of mind.

"I do not know what's going on. I'm shocked. A couple was sitting on a bench at our building entrance. The usual time. OMON drove up in a minibus, beat them, grabbed them, and took them away. What is with them now is unknown. This is some kind of horror for which there is no explanation "- said Ekaterina.