ECtHR awards compensation to relatives of people kidnapped in Chechnya

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg has pronounced the decision to award relatives of six natives of Northern Caucasus, whose fate stays unknown after enforced disappearances in Chechnya, the compensation in the amount of more than 430,000 euros.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that during the years of the counter-terrorist operation (CTO) and the rule of Ramzan Kadyrov, thousands of people disappeared in Chechnya, but the authorities of Russia did not take any measures to investigate their disappearances, claims the report prepared by human rights defenders Oleg Orlov and Alexander Cherkasov. They have called on the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to establish an international court to investigate crimes against humanity in Chechnya.

The complaints filed by relatives of six residents of Northern Caucasus, kidnapped in Chechnya in 2016-2020, have been granted by the Court in Strasbourg, the “Kavkaz.Realii”* reports.

It has been revealed that before their disappearance, the victims were in the law enforcers’ hands: all four men were taken from their houses by law enforcers in front of their relatives. “The executed men were suspected of involvement in terrorism or homosexuality,” notes the ECtHR’s official website.

According to the ECtHR’s resolution, in May 2017, the authorities of Chechnya showed Russian Ombudsperson Tatiana Moskalkova a brother to replace one of the missing men, forcing the young man to write an explanation letter on behalf of his missing relative. By doing the above, the authorities rejected the accusations of extrajudicial killings, and Tatiana Moskalkova “did not notice the deception” due to the similar appearance of the two brothers.

Another person who disappeared without a trace in Chechnya was Nillam Aliev, a native of Derbent. The man disappeared in Grozny together with his two fellow countrymen in February 2020, shortly after he had posted on the social media a video criticizing Ramzan Kadyrov.

The ECtHR has also upheld the complaint filed by relatives of Movsar Umarov, a 33-year-old resident of Grozny, who was taken away by law enforcers in the summer of 2020. The relatives of Movsar Umarov learned that he was kept at a police department as he had “watched a video of an opposition blogger.”

*Included by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) into the register of foreign agents.