The ICITB was created as a reaction of Belarusian and foreign human rights organisations to State torture and brutality towards civilians after the presidential elections on 9 August 2020. All case materials were translated by the ICITB from Belarusian to English. In addition, 35 cases included medical documentation. Almost every case file (49 cases) also included photographs of the complainant’s injuries taken at or before the time of interview. Every case file contained an interview with an individual claiming to have been arrested between 9-12 August 2020 and subjected to torture or ill-treatment by the police and security forces during and/or subsequent to arrest. In total, the 50 case files included 130 documents with 613 pages, 286 photographs and four videos. The aim of IRCT’s collaboration with ICITB was to determine the extent to which the available visual and medical evidence in each case was consistent with the individual’s allegations of torture and ill-treatment. Members of IFEG are preeminent medical experts in the forensic examination of victims of torture, and its 42 members have examined around 40,000 cases and testified in court and other forums over 4,000 times. In response to this statement, IRCT and IFEG asserted the importance of conducting effective forensic investigation of torture reports according to the international agreed principles set out in the Istanbul Protocol with a view to ensuring accountability and reparations for victims of these extensive human rights violations. However, in August 2021 the Committee announced it would not initiate any criminal proceedings because the State’s use of force was in accordance with Belarusian law, “in the suppression of offences”. Since pro-democracy protests began in August 2020 following the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko – a vote rejected as fraudulent by both the EU and the OSCE – Belarus’ state-run Investigative Committee reported receiving some 5,000 complaints of torture and ill-treatment. “This report, which is one of the first by experts to review the available forensic evidence, firmly establishes the existence of medical and visual evidence that is consistent with and corroborates the allegations of torture and ill-treatment by complainants in every case we examined,” said the IRCT in its report, ‘Belarus: A Coordinated Policy of Torture’. They put me on the ground near the paddy wagon and started shouting, ‘Who did you vote for?’ All this was accompanied by obscenities. “While they were carrying me, they stopped several times and beat me again. Beating with feet, batons, then grabbed me by the arms and legs and carried me into the paddy wagon,” said a man from Baranovichi, a small city in Western Belarus, describing his arrest and detention in a police truck. “On the evening of 10 August, I was walking home.
The IRCT has found 'compelling evidence' of torture by members of Belarus' riot police, the OMON, seen here detaining a man in Minsk on 9 August 2020.