ECtHR rejects five claims of South-Ossetian residents - victims of August 2008

A message appeared in the website of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that five out of seven complaints initially accepted right after the 2008 August war from residents of South Ossetia against Georgia have been withdrawn from consideration. A group of judges in Strasbourg made this decision on March 23.

Let us remind you that in August 2008 Georgia lodged claims against Russia to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN International Court of Justice. Among other things, Georgia had accused Russia of ethnic cleansings in the period from 1993 to 2008. In its turn, Russia also moved an initiative to sue Georgia at The Hague and Strasbourg on the fact of attacking South Ossetia; in this context the Investigatory Committee at the Prosecutor's Office (ICPO) of Russia gathered evidences of genocide in South Ossetia; these evidences were used at lodging the claims.

The above five claims were rejected, since the advocates in charge of them failed for several months to answer to official inquiries of the court. All the five cases dealt with the people who lost his relatives or property in the course of military actions in August 2008. With the help of the Strasbourg Court they hoped to win material compensation from the Georgian government. Their interests were represented by three North-Ossetian lawyers - Vadim Sailaonov, Zinaida Milyaeva and Vladislav Baikulov, the "Echo of the Caucasus" Radio reports.

Mr Baikulov said that he was ten years in lawyer's activity in Vladikavkaz, but never before represented his clients' interests in international courts; therefore, he did not know the respective legal procedures.

The lawyer explained that on the first days of the August he went to Tskhinvali, spoke on local television and offered his legal services to the victims. As a result, he gathered about 300 claims of residents of South Ossetia against Georgia; however, he could not continue running the cases for lack of money and elementary poor English, which hampered him to understand the requests, send to him from Strasbourg.

"It was all my personal initiative. I wanted to help people who had suffered. But now I just have no money to go there. I explained it everywhere, but what can I do? I defend ordinary people, and I don't have funds to defend them free of charge for so long," said Vladislav Baikulov.

Lawyer Zinaida Milyaeva said that she sent no official answers to Strasbourg and was not ready discussing the reasons at the moment.

The five Ossetian cases rejected by the ECtHR played a key role for further consideration of other 3300 cases of South Ossetia against Georgia, the above Radio reports, since under the Strasbourg procedures, judges may now apply this decision to other similar claims.

Rumer Lemaitre, an employee of the Moscow office of the Dutch organization "Legal Initiative" who runs several Ossetian cases against Georgia said that right after the refusal to consider these five claims, the Strasbourg court decided "to give the second chance" and accepted seven new cases from South Ossetia to consideration.

However, Mr Lemaitre is afraid that these claims may also fail, since some of them are represented by the same lawyers from North Ossetia, who had admitted that they cannot run them.

The lawyer said that representatives of his organization had earlier offered cooperation to some of North-Ossetian lawyers, but were rejected.