08:09, 17 January 2009

Strasbourg Court grants priority to 7 complaints from South Ossetia

The European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg has awarded a priority to seven claims against Georgia filed by residents of South Ossetia and a Russian Army soldier. They will be considered out of turn.

The claims of South Ossetia residents against Georgia are basically on violations of the rights to life, property, medical aid, and also against inhuman treatment and nationality-based discrimination.

The Strasbourg Court made a decision to grant priority to 7 claims out of more than three thousand similar complaints against Georgia sent to the Court after last August. Under Article 54 of the European Court Rules, the complaints will be sent to the Georgian party. It will have a chance to make comments on them, as the press release of the ECtHR runs.

In the comments placed in her personal blog on the decision of the Strasbourg Court, Tatiana Lokshina, deputy head of the Moscow Bureau of the Human Rights Watch, has written that the decision to consider the complaints from South Ossetia was made by the ECtHR "improbably quickly".