posted by zaina19 on December, 2005 as Human Rights
From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 12/10/2005 4:14 AM Chechen Case Starts in Europe
Issue #1129(95), Friday, December 9, 2005
Associated Press
STRASBOURG — The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday heard that Russian forces allegedly detained and killed a young man while capturing a Chechen village, in the first disappearance case from the southern Russian republic to be dealt with by the court.
Fatima Bazorkina filed the complaint at the court in 2001, after she saw television footage of a Russian officer interrogating her son as troops were taking over the village of Alkhan-Kala.
The officer orders soldiers to shoot and “finish off” her son, Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev, at the end of the footage, her lawyers said.
Bazorkina’s son disappeared six years ago and she saw the footage in February 2000, the court heard. Her visits to prisons and detention centers and a criminal investigation into his disappearance, which closed in 2004, were fruitless.
Bazorkina is suing the Russian government for violating the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty that is legally binding for all European countries. She accuses Russian forces of killing her son and said his disappearance caused her anguish and emotional distress.
The court could take months to reach a ruling, with another 200 similar cases pending, court spokeswoman Stephanie Klein said.
Last month, Alu Alkhanov, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed president, said that 2,500 people had been registered as kidnapped or missing in Chechnya.
Russian forces have been battling separatists in Chechnya since 1999, the start of the second war there in a decade. It was not established at Thursday’s hearing whether Yandiyev had joined the separatist movement and fought for an independent Chechnya, Klein said. http://www.sptimes.ru/story/16327
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