ECtHR awards compensation to families of 11 kidnapped residents of Chechnya

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ordered the Russian authorities to pay more than one million euros of compensation to relatives of 11 people detained by soldiers during the second Chechen military campaign. The ECtHR began to appoint more substantial compensation to relatives of disappeared persons, notes an advocate from the "Legal Initiative".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that since 2001, the ECtHR has issued more than 250 decisions on complaints about enforced disappearances of residents of Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Today, the ECtHR has awarded 1,003,500 euros in compensation for moral and material harm to the families of 11 residents of Chechnya, who disappeared in 2002-2006 during the second Chechen military campaign.

The ECtHR has recognized that the articles on the right to life, the right to personal liberty and integrity, and the right to an effective legal remedy of the Convention on Human Rights were violated with respect to the disappeared persons. In turn, the plaintiffs endured suffering because of the disappearance of their family members, states the decision published on the ECtHR's website.

"The European Court has increased the amount of compensation to the families of victims of enforced disappearance in Chechnya. If earlier each of them got 60,000 euros in compensation for moral harm, then the today's resolution awarded each of them 80,000 euros. Thus, the ECtHR assessed the unwillingness of the Russian authorities to conduct effective investigations," the "Legal Initiative" website quotes advocate Olga Gnezdilova, who represented the interests of some plaintiffs.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on March 12, 2019 at 08:53 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.