but the court failed to respond in any way. Eventually, the defendant refused to self-incriminate and pleaded not guilty. The jury acquitted him. The Situation 1 described above where the torture victim complains during the pre-trial investigation would have been adequate – except for the widespread absence of effective investigation of torture reports in Russia. II. Ineffective investigation The ineffectiveness of torture investigations is due primarily to the Russian authorities’ poor performance in searching for, obtaining, and assessing evidence of torture complaints. These are the responsibilities of the investigator tasked in the Russian criminal justice system with conducting pretrial investigations into allegations of torture. Criminal investigators are empowered by Russian law to act independently at their own discretion; the legal theory considers this provision necessary to ensure independence of the investigation. But in the Russian law enforcement practice, this principle is often abused as a universal justification of an investigator’s inaction. For example, an investigator may fail to appoint an expert examination; when a torture victim or their lawyer appeals the investigator’s inaction in court, the latter will often disregard the victim’s arguments as to why an expert examination is essential for an objective picture of events. Usually, courts refuse to examine the investigator’s actions or inaction critically and refer to the investigator’s independence to dismiss the torture victim’s complaint. Independent investigation – supported, at least in theory, by the legally stipulated independence of the investigator – must also follow proper practices such as the impartial assessment of available information and evidence. An investigator is required to assess evidence for reliability and significance without prejudice as to the source of this information. In practice, however, most investigators are biased against torture victims. If torture is reported by someone accused of a crime, their statement and their version of the events often get rejected by the investigator who typically argues that “a criminal’s words cannot be trusted.” An effective investigation is impossible unless the investigator acts promptly to identify and document available evidence. But in many cases, investigators neglect this duty in the context of torture allegations. Adding complexity to evidence collection is the fact that virtually all such evidence is under full and exclusive control of the alleged torture perpetrators. This is described in some detail in the Russian NGO Coalition’s Shadow Report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture in 2018. An investigator tasked with verification of a torture report (alleging torture in police custody or in prison) can only use evidence to which they are given access by police officers or penitentiary/pre-trial detention personnel, including the medical staff who often fail to document physical, let alone psychological, impacts of torture, nor do they report torture to the law enforcement authorities, unlike medics in civilian hospitals. Access to all video surveillance recordings in places of detention is exclusively at the disposal of these institutions. The administrators of such institutions often refuse to make such recordings available citing that they are “for official use only.” We have documented refusals to disclose recordings requested by investigators. Very common is the situation where certain recordings are requested in court proceedings, but prison administrations claim that they have been either damaged or deleted. In our practice, we have often noted cases where medical examinations of inmates are conducted superficially, sometimes with prison bars separating the medic from the inmate, and signs of torture are not properly documented. As a result, crucial evidence of ill-treatment is lost forever. For example, in one of the cases assisted by PVF, we obtained video footage of a medical examination of V. after he was beaten at Penal Colony IK-1 in Yaroslavl in April 2017. It can be seen clearly in the 44