MOSCOW, May 10 (RAPSI) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday that the rights of Vladimir Topekhin, a paralyzed Russian national sentenced to four years in correctional colony for fraud, were vilolated in part.

Topekhin, born in 1982, a Moscow resident, was arrested in July 2013 on suspicion of committing a large-scale fraud. According to investigators, Topekhin, who was an auditor, received 10 million rubles (about $150,000) from the alleged fraud victim by promising him assistance in opening a forensic expertise center in Moscow. He was convicted of fraud for not having fulfilled his obligations and keeping the money.

The time of the applicant’s detention was repeatedly prolonged as prosecutors referred to the seriousness of accusations and a forged passport Topekhin possessed.

In January 2014, the applicant was sentenced to six years in prison.  The Moscow City Court mitigated the sentence to four years in a correctional colony in February of the same year, and Topekhin was sent to serve his sentence in a correctional colony in Kostroma.

The Moscow Tverskoy District Court passed its judgement during a ‘visiting session’ held at a Moscow pretrial detention facility, since by that time Topekhin suffered the paralysis of the lower half of his body which allegedly resulted from serious spine injuries he sustained in 2008 and 2010 and deterioration of his health during detention.

Later, a court in Kostroma ruled to release Topekhin due to a serious illness. In spite of a Prosecutor’s Office protests, the Kostroma Regional Court upheld the ruling. In his claim filed with the ECHR Topekhin  alleged that his rights were violated under Article 3 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (“the Convention”) prohibiting torture. He complained that his health had significantly deteriorated in detention, as a result of the authorities’ failure to comply with their obligations under this Article of the Convention and to provide him with adequate medical care. The applicant also maintained that he had been left without proper assistance when confined to bed and being assisted only by other inmates. In addition, he complained about the conditions of his 16-hours-long transport from a detention facility in Moscow to the colony in Kostroma in standard train carriages and prison vans with no special equipment installed to meet the needs of a bedridden person.

Finally, the applicant complained that his detention on remand was of excessive length and that his appeals against the detention orders had not been examined speedily, referring to Article 5 (right to liberty and security) of the Convention.

The European Court held that Topekhin’s rights were violated under Article 3 on the accounts of the conditions of his detention in the remand prisons and transfer to the correctional colony, granting him a compensation amounting to 19,500 euros.