Translated material
Strictly on budget
Parliamentarians will determine the amount of payments to victims of the terrorist attack
Another court case regarding moral compensation for former hostages of the Dubrovka Theater Center ended in failure for the plaintiffs. The Basmanny Court yesterday rejected four claims from five foreign citizens against the Russian Ministry of Finance. This time, residents of America, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the Netherlands tried to defend their rights. The total amount of the claim was $11.5 million. As is known, the Moscow government recently refused to pay moral compensation to approximately 60 Russian victims of the tragic events at Dubrovka.The representative of the defendant, Ekaterina Nikolskaya, said during the debate in court that Alexei Kudrin’s department “sincerely sympathizes with the victims, but the Ministry of Finance is only carrying out the orders of the government, which decided to pay 100 thousand rubles for the deceased and 50 thousand for the injured hostage.” In addition, she added that the Duma is currently preparing amendments to the law “On the Fight against Terrorism,” which will clearly define the amounts of compensation for moral and material damage. It is obvious that they will no longer receive the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars that the former hostages demand.
Until now, lawyers have tried to achieve serious payments for their clients on the basis of Article 17 of the Law “On the Fight against Terrorism.” This article provides for the payment of compensation to victims of a terrorist attack from the budget of the region where the terrorist attack occurred, or from the federal budget. And they were faced with the fact that the authorities willingly agreed to compensate for material damage for the loss of a breadwinner, but completely refused to talk about compensation for moral damage. Therefore, the hostages’ lawyer Igor Trunov decided to present “moral” claims as “material” at yesterday’s meeting of the Basmanny Court. And he presented many certificates from the hospital about the deterioration in the health of the former hostages after the liberation operation of the Russian special services. However, to the surprise of the plaintiffs, the court refused due to an insufficient legislative framework. “Yesterday the right of citizens to a fair trial was violated,” Igor Trunov commented on the situation to a correspondent for the Vremya Novostei newspaper. - If a law has not yet been adopted stipulating the amount of compensation, there is no regulatory framework on the basis of which this or that decision can be made, why did the court not suspend the process at the preliminary hearing stage? After all, we were in vain bothering already severely affected people: we collected expert evidence and certificates from hospitals.”
Now former hostages from near and far abroad will await the adoption of a new law by the State Duma. And the lawyers intend to file another cassation appeal with the Moscow City Court and then seek justice in the international court in Strasbourg.