Yekaterinburg court sentences three cops to six years in prison for raping undocumented sex worker

A court in Yekaterinburg has convicted three former police officers of raping a woman in their patrol car in August 2019. According to the human rights group “Zona Prava,” former officer Vadim Mustafin was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, while former officers Vyacheslav Tropin and Andrey Bessarabov were sentenced to six years each. 

Sources told the local news outlet Znak.com that the victim was a Kazakh national without Russian citizenship. Born in 1997, she was allegedly working as a prostitute in Yekaterinburg at the time of the assault. The woman told investigators that the officers threatened to bring her to the police station and “pass her around” if she refused to have sex with them in their patrol car.

After an internal audit following the assault, the three perpetrators and three of their direct supervisors were fired from the city’s police force. Another 14 officers of different ranks were also subjected to disciplinary measures.