10:00, 19 December 2009

A hundred new complaints submitted to European Court from Chechnya this year

In 2009, about one hundred new complaints were lodged from Chechnya to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). They have to do mainly with detentions and disappearances of applicants' relatives. This was explained by Anatoly Kovler, Judge of the European Court from the Russian Federation.

The Judge also said that 55 decisions passed in Strasbourg this year were on Chechen cases. "Complaints from Ingushetia should be added here," said Mr Kovler and added: "I'd like to hope that the law draft developed by the Ministry of Justice on compensations to the persons who suffered from counterterrorist operations, will be adopted in the near future", ITAR-TASS reports.

This year, the number of complaints from Russia to the ECtHR has increased by more than 10 percent. They now make a third of all the complaints considered by the ECtHR.