European Court fined the Russian Federation for disappearance and deaths of residents of Chechnya

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg fined Russia to a sum of 160 thousand euros for disappearance and death of residents of Chechnya Movsar and Movladi Nasukhanovs and Magomed Dudarov in 2002.

The communiqué of the Court runs that Nasukhanov brothers were detained in their home in the settlement of Staroye-Atagi, Grozny district, in February, 2002. Their younger brother who was soon released had been detained together with them. According to the younger brother, Movsar and Movladi were taken to a command post of a Russian military unit fit out in a building of a mill. A week later their parents discovered their burned down bodies in a neighbouring village. An investigation was started which has provided no results as yet.

Magomed Dudarov disappeared in November, 2002, when armed and camouflaged people wearing masks burst into his house in the village of Ken-Yurt, Grozny district of Chechnya. In December the authorities started an investigation, and again with no result. Dudarov's further fate is unknown, "Echo of Moscow" reports.

The Russian authorities, in their turn, do not disprove the information according to which the Nasukhanovs and Dudarov were kidnapped by unidentified armed and masked persons and the brothers were found dead later on. ECtHR states in its communiqué that the Government has however refused to submit the majority of the investigative materials upon the Court's request.

"In both cases free navigation of camouflaged military men in military cars through checkpoints during the regime of curfew and their special operations on search of gunmen and their supporters as well as detentions of the plaintiffs' relatives confirm the aggrieved persons' assumptions that the above mentioned people were Russian servicemen", Russian Agency of Legal and Juridical Information (RALJI) quotes the document of the European Court.

The judges of ECtHR have decided that Magomed Dudarov could be considered lost and the Nasukhanovs killed through Russian servicemen's fault.

According the judgment of ECtHR, the Russian authorities must pay the plaintiffs 160 thousand euros as an offset of moral damage and 8 thousand euros on discharge of legal costs. The judgment will come into effect if none of the two parties within three months submits the request to pass the case on the Big Chamber of ECtHR which in its turn may decline the request.