Chechen residents win trial at European Court on Human Rights

On October 23, the European Court on Human Rights considered the case "Magomed Musaev et al versus Russia" on disappearance of three residents of Chechnya: Said-Rakhman Musaev, Odes Mityaev and Magomed Magomadov, and found that the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was breached in relation of these persons.

This was reported by the public organization named "Legal Initiative for Russia". The Court has ruled that the relatives of the casualties shall be paid compensation of material and moral damage in the sum of 80,000 euros.

Said-Rakhman Musaev, Odes Mityaev and Magomed Magomadov were detained on December 10, 2000, in the course of a mass clean-up ("zachistka") conducted by federal troops in the villages of Raduzhnoe, Pobedinskoe and Dolinskiy located 25 kilometres away from the city of Grozny.

"On that day Russian militaries detained 21 persons. All of them, except Said-Rakhman, Odes and Magomed, were later released. Some of the detainees told later that they had been brought to the Russian military base in Khankala. Despite cold weather, they were kept for several days in two holes 3-4 meters deep. They were taken to interrogations one by one, where they were beaten with butts of sub-machine guns," runs the statement.

On February 21, 2001, bodies of Said-Rakhman, Odes and Magomed were found in a deserted settlement named "Zdorovye" (Health) (also known as "Dachnoe"), about one kilometre off Khankala, the statement further runs. The bodies had numerous gunshot and knife wounds.

In its unanimous decision, the European Court has established that in this case the following rights and freedom stipulated by the European Convention had been breached: the right to life in relation to missing people; the Russian authorities failed to conduct an efficient investigation of disappearances; the missing people had been detained illegally; the attitude of state bodies to applicants' complaints was classified as inhuman treatment; the applicants were deprived of efficient means of legal defence against violations; and a failure of the state to present the materials of the criminal case to the Court is a refusal to cooperate with the Court.