ECtHR fines Russia by 207,000 euros under claims of Chechen residents

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has concluded that Russia had broken a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), namely, the right to life, prohibition of torture and the right to freedom and personal immunity in relation to three residents of Chechnya in 2002 and 2003.

Russia shall pay 18,000 euros as compensation of material damage, 180,000 euros - for moral harm and 9500 euros - as legal costs.

According to the materials of the case, Said-Selim Benuev and Abu Zhnalaev disappeared in November 2002. Armed people in masks took them away from home, and their relatives went out to chase the cars. Then, a man came out of one of the cars and said that those were the cars of the OVD of the city of Urus-Martan, and their chasers may be shot dead. On the following day, the head of the militia department told the claimants that no force would be applied to their relatives. Since then, nobody ever saw Benuev and Zhnalaev again.

Arthur Akhmatkhanov, a student of the Grozny Oil Institute, disappeared in April 2003 in the city of Shali, where he did shopping together with his mother. The mother had forgotten some document and returned home to take it. When she returned to Shali, her son was nowhere, but witnesses saw that certain servicemen were putting a young man with a bag over his head into a car.

The claimants believe that Russian power agents had been involved in kidnapping their relatives. The court has ruled that the relatives had presented a logical explanation of the facts, while Russian authorities failed to submit all the required documents to Strasbourg. The judges decided that the three missing persons should be considered perished as a result of a non-recognized operation of Russian militaries, the RIA "Novosti" reports.