Translated material
"Mrs. X"
The European Court punished Russia for the death of a Chechen human rights activist
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) yesterday again punished the Russian authorities for crimes committed against civilians in Chechnya , awarding 85 thousand euros in compensation for moral damage to the daughter of Chechen human rights activist Zura Bitieva. Her mother, according to the applicant, was killed by Chechen law enforcement officers for actively opposing the war. She had to experience torture and inhuman treatment in the Chernokozovo prison, which has been mentioned more than once in connection with massive violations of the rights of citizens.Zura Bitieva would have turned 59 years old this year. In May 2003, she, along with three other members of her family, was killed in her own home in the village of Kalinovskaya, Naursky district, Chechnya. Her daughter then filed a complaint with the ECHR. Some time ago she received political asylum in Germany and, probably for this reason, she asked not to disclose her name and in the court materials she is listed as “Mrs. X.”
Zura Bitieva lived in Kalinovskaya with her husband Ramzan Iduev and children - son Idris and daughter, whose name is now hidden. She was active politically and constantly participated in anti-war rallies; in 1994-1996 she worked in the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers. On January 24, 2000, the military came to Bitieva’s house to check her documents. The woman and her son Idris explained that they did not have passports because they gave them away to exchange them for new ones. The soldiers were satisfied with these explanations and left.
But the next day at 6 am, about 20 people in camouflage, some of whom were wearing masks, surrounded the house. Then they jumped over the fence, burst into the courtyard and began knocking on the door with rifle butts. The head of the family, Ramzan, opened the door and asked those who came what they needed. Four of the visitors - those who had come the day before - announced that they were checking passports. They broke into the house and ordered Bitieva to follow them to the local police station to find out the circumstances surrounding the registration of her passport. The same order was addressed to Idris. The mother and son were put in a police UAZ and taken to the temporary police department of the Naursky district. They sat there for two hours, and then they were transported to the Chernokozovo pre-trial detention center, where they were placed in different cells.
Zura and Idris had to spend 24 days in prison. The woman later said that at first the military forced her to watch how they abused other prisoners. Along the corridor, about 60 men were forced to run back and forth naked, holding their clothes in their hands, while the soldiers beat them. Then Bitieva was forced to stand facing the wall with her hands raised until the evening. At the same time, the corridor was not heated, the windows were broken, and it was very cold. The woman was not allowed to sit or lie down, and in the evening she was taken to a cell. It was small and dirty, there were four iron beds and a toilet. At different times, from three to ten women were kept in this cell. Once a day, prisoners were given a liter of water per cell and a dirty bowl of food, which had to be divided among three.
Bitiyeva complained that she was constantly humiliated the entire time she was in prison. The jailers told her that she would not leave there alive - she would commit suicide or go crazy. The human rights activist was often pushed and hit with rifle butts. And one day - it was February 3 - the soldiers sprayed some kind of gas into the cells, from which the prisoners began to cough and suffocate. This despite the fact that there were many sick people and even children in prison. Bitieva constantly had to watch how other prisoners were beaten and tortured. And sometimes she had to listen to the screams of her own son, who was beaten right in front of her cell door.
Bitieva was summoned for questioning four times. The interrogator did not give his name or rank and kept asking questions of a general nature - name, where he was from, what clan he belonged to, whether he was a Muslim, whether he prayed. She was also asked about the “Peace March” to Moscow, in which Bitieva took part, and wanted to know who financed it.
The prisoner was in dire need of medical care, as she suffered from cholecystitis and heart failure, but this was denied to her. Her condition worsened. One day she fainted in the corridor, but the jailers allowed other prisoners to carry the woman to her cell only half an hour later. Bitieva’s daughter said that she often brought medicine and food to the prison, but not everything got to her mother and brother—most of it was taken by the soldiers. Everything that Bitieva and her daughter said about the conditions of detention in Chernokozovo, about regular beatings and abuse, about health problems, was later confirmed by another woman (she also did not disclose her name), who herself was arrested around the same period in January-February 2000. Bitiyeva herself managed to write many articles about all this in the press and reports for human rights organizations.
The Russian government confirmed to the ECHR that Zura Bitieva and Idris Iduev were placed in the Chernokozovo reception center on the basis of a 1993 presidential decree “On measures to prevent vagrancy and begging” (this document became invalid in 2004). According to authorities, both were released on February 17, when they were identified. As the ECHR noted, no data on the legality of the arrest was provided to the court.
Bitieva did not remember what date it was when she was sent from Chernokozovo to the hospital in the Naursky district. Her daughter testified that her mother was unconscious, and doctors insisted on her hospitalization. At the same time, the pre-trial detention center employees released their “ward” reluctantly, only after the prison doctor insisted on it. But even in the hospital they did not take their eyes off Bitieva; for several weeks a guard was on duty at her bed. Three days after hospitalization, they even tried to take her back to Chernokozovo, but the doctors did not allow it.
In early March, Bitieva’s daughter received a paper from the head of the Naursky VOVD, which stated that nothing criminal was found in the woman’s actions. Bitieva spent a month in the hospital, and then another month at home in bed, as she was still very weak. Idris was released ten days after his mother's release, and no charges were brought against him. In their memorandum to the ECHR, representatives of the Russian authorities noted that none of the applicants filed complaints about ill-treatment in Chernokozovo with the prosecutor's office.
Three years later, trouble came to Bitieva’s house again. It happened on the night of May 21, 2003, when the whole family - Bitieva herself, her husband, son and brother Abubakar Bitiev were sleeping peacefully at home. Only Bitieva’s other son (his name also remained incognito) spent the night with neighbors, and his one-year-old son was with his grandmother at that time. At 3.30, eleven men in camouflage and masks armed with machine guns entered the human rights activist’s house. Neighbors heard machine gun fire and screams. When everything calmed down, people went out into the street and saw the open door of Bitieva’s house. The woman’s son, who was spending the night next door, saw a terrible picture: his mother, father, uncle and brother were lying dead on the floor with their hands tied and their mouths taped. All of them were shot.
An investigation into the incident was never carried out - the case, as has happened more than once, was closed and reopened several times, but the perpetrators were never found. But they began dragging Bitieva’s daughter for interrogation, who, being pregnant and fearing for her life and the life of her two-year-old son, wrote a complaint to the ECHR. The court immediately sent a petition to the Russian authorities, in which it recommended stopping the persecution of the woman. The interrogations stopped, but she decided to leave the country and went to Germany, requesting political asylum there.
In yesterday's decision, the ECHR judges stated that the Russian authorities violated the ban on the use of torture against Ms. Bitieva and did not conduct a proper investigation into this fact. By illegally arresting the woman, they violated her right to freedom and personal integrity. And the murder of Bitieva and three members of her family was regarded as a violation of the right to life, coupled, again, with a failure to conduct a proper investigation. Inhumane treatment and deprivation of the right to an effective remedy were also found to apply to Mrs. X.