A Moscow policeman has been arrested and charged with savagely beating a Spanish citizen who reportedly playfully attempted to turn around the officer's hat. The Spaniard died about week later.
Investigators arrested Sergei Novikov, a patrolman from the Konkovo precinct in southwestern Moscow, on March 13 and charged him in the fatal beating of Fernando Bernaldo de Quiros, a dual Spanish-Russian citizen whose mother came to the Soviet Union as a refugee during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported Friday.
The Spanish Embassy said Tuesday that it was following the case closely. The City Prosecutor's Office declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.
De Quiros, 58, died on Jan. 23 at City Hospital No. 7 of internal injuries that his wife, Yulia, said were the result of the beating 10 days earlier. She said her husband had gone for a walk late in the evening on Jan. 13 after celebrating the Orthodox New Year with his family, the Spanish daily El Pais reported. She said he got lost during his walk and, weak from diabetes, arthritis and hypertension, approached a group of policemen and asked them to take him home.
Four policemen escorted De Quiros back to his apartment on Ulitsa Vvedenskogo, but on the stairwell he jokingly tried to turn the hat around on the head of one of them, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported. The policeman grew furious and began punching De Quiros repeatedly, the newspaper reported.
His wife told El Pais that she saw the police car pull up to the house at around 2 a.m. and that De Quiros looked well. But when she walked downstairs to meet him, she found him writhing in pain on the floor.
She said the officers helped her take her husband to the elevator.
Only after De Quiros collapsed in his apartment did he tell her that it was "these policemen who killed me," El Pais reported.
