K. Moskalenko: Russia authorities imitate enforcement of European Court's judgements on Chechnya cases

The trend of recent years - hampering by the state of enforcement of the decisions of the European Court in the territory of the Russian Federation - may result in suspension of the Council of Europe membership. This is the opinion of Karina Moskalenko, Commissioner of the International Board of Lawyers and project manager at the Centre for Promoting International Defence.

The Centre for Promoting International Defence was founded in December 1994 as an independent non-commercial public organization uniting professional lawyers-human rights defenders. Experts of the Centre are engaged in rendering assistance to victims of human rights violations by means of international legal mechanisms: the European Court for Human Rights, the UN Committee for Human Rights, the European Committee against Tortures, Inhuman or Humiliating Treatment and Punishment, and topical mechanisms of the United Nations. As of January 2007, the European Court has passed judgements on the merits of 17 cases, which were presented by the Centre's advocates and lawyers, on 19 more cases the eligibility rulings have been adopted. Thus, the lawyers who cooperate with the Centre are covering about eight percent of all Russian cases considered by the European Court (about 300 cases in total).

According to the experts, as of today, apart from the cases of YUKOS and Mr. Khodorkovskiy, their priorities are the cases related to the situation in the places of detention and in Chechnya. According to Oksana Preobrazhenskaya, Director of the Centre, over 15,000 applications have arrived from the persons who have found themselves in the places of imprisonment for whatever reason.

Answering the question whether the Russian Federation fulfils the European Court's decisions, Ms. Moskalenko replied that decisions on monetary payments are really enforced. But as to decisions concerning the measures of more general character, there is a feeling of insufficiency of the efforts undertaken by the state.