Amnesty International urges Ukraine to end rampant police beatings, torture
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Amnesty International says rampant beatings and torture at the hands of police go unpunished in Ukraine and it is urging the government to set up an independent body to investigate.
The London-based watchdog says that out of some 115,000 complaints filed last year over police treatment, only 1.5 percent were investigated and only 320 criminal cases were filed.
Amnesty International said that since prosecutors work in tandem with the police, they cannot be trusted to objectively investigate cases of police abuse and they regularly cover up the crimes of their police colleagues.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The watchdog cited the case of Oleksandr Popov, an auto mechanic who says police took him to a forest and beat, choked and electrocuted him for hours trying to extract a confession. Prosecutors refused to file charges.