Russia ordered to compensate mothers of disappeared Chechens

Apr 22, 2010, 17:57 GMT

Strasbourg, France - Russia was ordered Thursday to pay compensation totalling 190,000 euros (about 253,000 dollars) to the families of young Chechens apprehended by Russian authorities and then never seen again.

The European Court of Human Rights made the ruling on cases filed by the relatives of: Sultan Khatuyev, detained in 2004; Luiza Mutayeva, detained in 2004; and Vakhit Dzhabrailov, detained in 2003.

In each case, the court ruled that authorities had not worked to provide information on the missing people and that the families should be compensated because it could be presumed the three were dead after they had not been heard from in years.

'In the absence of the applicants relatives or of any news about them for several years, and given the failure of the government to justify their disappearance, the court found that the all three persons had to be presumed dead following their unacknowledged detention by state servicemen and that their death could be attributed to the state.'

The court also noted that: 'Having regard to previous cases before it concerning disappearances in Chechnya and in Ingushetia, the court found that in the context of the situation in the region, the detention of a person by unidentified servicemen without any subsequent acknowledgment of the detention could be regarded as life- threatening.'

The disappearance of the relatives, combined with the government's failure to provide information on their whereabouts, amounted to a violation of human rights, the Strasbourg, France-based court ruled.

Much of the court's work in recent years has been consumed by complaints of human rights violations in Chechnya and the other Russian Caucasian republics.

Separatist militants across the region have been engaged in fights with Kremlin-backed authorities for years.