Two former police officers from North Ossetia convicted of torture killed in Ukraine
Two former police officers from North Ossetia who were convicted in the case involving the death of Vladimir Tskaev after being tortured in police custody have been killed in the full-scale war in Ukraine.
One of them, Alan Khokhoev, known by his callsign ‘Lawyer’, had been sentenced to 10 years in a high-security penal colony. His death was reported by local propagandist Arzu Mamedova, who said that Khokhoev was killed in April ‘while performing a combat mission’ but had been listed as missing in action because his body could not be recovered for some time.
According to Mamedova, Khokhoev’s daughter was born after his death. He was buried in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia on Thursday, 30 October.
Political commentator Rooslan Totrov also reported that the former deputy head of Vladikavkaz’s police, Kazbek Kazbekov, was also killed in Ukraine.
Both Kazbekov and Khokhoev were convicted in the death and torture of Vladimir Tskaev, a man who was killed while in police interrogation in 2015. Kazbekov, Kokhoev, and eight other police officers were convicted in the case.
Kohkoev was found guilty of ‘intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm resulting in the death’ of Tskaev. The court sentenced him to 10 years in a high-security colony and stripped him of his rank. After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Khokhoev was reportedly recruited from prison to serve at the front.
Kazbekov was prosecuted later than the others, and information about his sentence is not publicly available. In court, Kazbekov claimed in court that he ‘did not hear anything’ while Tskaev was being interrogated. He later supported his colleagues’ claim that Tskaev ‘had been hitting his head against the walls and the floor’.
According to his colleagues, Kazbekov volunteered to go to the front in September 2024 and went missing two months later. According to preliminary data, his body was handed over by the Ukrainian side on 18 September.
According to investigators, in 2015, officers at Vladikavkaz’s Iriston Police Department beat and suffocated 39-year-old local resident Tskaev with a plastic bag during questioning as a witness. He lost consciousness and died in hospital the next day.
The final forensic examination found that Tskaev’s probable cause of death was a closed head injury. Earlier medical experts had concluded that he had died of asphyxiation caused by suffocation with a plastic bag.
Three years later, Tskaev’s widow, Zemfira Tskaeva, succeeded in securing a trial against the officers. Ten police officers were charged with abuse of office, falsifying documents and causing death by negligence.
In March 2023, the Fifth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction overturned the sentences of the 10 officers, and in October of that year the case was returned to the Prosecutor’s Office. The formal reason for the reversal was the absence of defence lawyers at some hearings. The defendants did not appear at the first hearing after the case was re-opened.
Elizaveta Chukharova
