the hospital where Mikheyev was on treatment and reviewed the medical records of his stay. Witnesses of Mikheyev's vehicle search claimed that cartridges were removed from the car when they were absent. Moreover, Maria S. said that she had no complaints regarding Alexei Mikheyev. After receiving evidence of the torture, illegal search, and other significant violations of human rights to regard to Mikheyev, work on the case was conducted by human rights defenders in several ways at the same time. At first, the efforts of the Nizhny Novgorod Society for Human Rights and the Committee Against Torture were focused on identifying and prosecuting the persons who tortured Mikheyev in the Lenin Regional Department of Internal Affairs in Nizhny Novgorod. Secondly, human rights activists sought to prosecute police officers who fabricated administrative material in relation to Mikheyev in Bogorodsk. Also, having irrefutable evidence of Mikheyev's innocence, the Committee Against Torture also joined forces in defending Mikheev from prosecution. To represent interests and protect Mikheyev, Yuri Sidorov was provided as a lawyer. In addition, Igor Kalyapin became a representative of the interests of the victim. Litigation in Russia On September 21, 1998, Mikheyev's mother, Lyudmila Nikolaevna Mikheyeva, filed an application with the prosecutor's office of the Leninsky district requiring prosecution against the police officers who tortured her son. Criminal case No. 68241 was instituted on the signs of crime in accordance with Art. 110 of the Criminal Code (Incitement to Suicide) because of Mikheyev’s falling out of the window. In addition, Lyudmila Mikheyeva filed a complaint with the prosecutor of Bogorodsk complaining about the exceeding of official powers by the employees of the District Department of the Internal Affairs during his administrative arrest and search of his apartment and car. After a year and a half, in March 2000, a criminal case was opened in accordance with Art. 292 of the Criminal Code (Official Forgery). In total, Mikheyev’s investigation took 7 years, during which it ceased more than twenty times and was illegally held at least three times. According to the Committee Against Torture, the Russian officials set a sort of an "anti-record" in regards to the inefficiency of the investigation. In the opinion of the human rights defenders, this exhausting nature of the investigation was set up to force Mikheyev to give up on fighting against injustice. In the case of Incitement to Suicide on November 30, 2005, the court sentenced