Translated material
Without a trace or consequence
The arrest and disappearance of the former speaker of the Chechen parliament will cost Russia 40 thousand euros
Today the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will announce its ruling in the case of the brothers Yakub and Ayub Magomadov . The brothers lived in Chechnya and accused the Russian authorities of the illegal arrest and subsequent disappearance of their third brother, Ayubkhan Magomadov. This happened in October 2000. At the same time, one of the applicants, Ayub, later complained that his brother Yakub also disappeared under unknown circumstances, but already in April 2004. He believes that this happened precisely because of their decision to appeal to the ECHR.Although the court will publish its ruling only today, we can safely assume that the applicants will be awarded substantial compensation, as in all other so-called “Chechen cases.” It is usually calculated in tens of thousands of euros.
This is not the first time that our fellow citizens from Chechnya do not live to see the moment when European justice has its say. This was the case in the case of Zura Bitieva against Russia - a woman and several of her relatives were shot in her own home in 2003. This was the case in the case of Zura Alikhadzhieva - she died in February of this year. Last week, the ECHR awarded her 40 thousand euros in compensation for the fact that her son, former speaker of the parliament of Ichkeria Ruslan Alikhadzhiev, disappeared without a trace after he was arrested by intelligence officers in 2000. This happened, as the court found, through the fault of the Russian authorities. The charges were brought forward more than seriously - violation of the right to life, the right to liberty and security of person, the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment, as well as the right to an effective remedy before official bodies. All of them were confirmed during the court hearing. And all the arguments of representatives of the Russian government were rejected.
Zura Alikhadzhieva lived in the village of Shali, 40 km southeast of Grozny. She had her own house at 97 Suvorov Street. Her son Ruslan, born in 1961, lived there with his wife and four small children. Several other relatives lived at the same address. From 1997 to 1999, Ruslan Alikhadzhiev served as speaker of the parliament of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. As the applicant subsequently noted in her complaint to the ECHR, in 1999 her son did not take part in the renewed hostilities, but, on the contrary, tried to organize peace negotiations.
Only all his political activities ended far from peacefully. On the morning of May 17, 2000, when Alikhadzhiev was at home, next to his sick mother, several infantry fighting vehicles drove up to Suvorov Street. 20 military men in camouflage surrounded the parliamentarian’s house and several neighbors, and two helicopters circled above. Masked soldiers burst into the Alikhadzhievs’ room and ordered everyone to lie down on the floor. Without presenting any documents, the military handcuffed Ruslan Alikhadzhiev and put him in one of the infantry fighting vehicles. Five other neighbors were detained along with him. They were all released the next day, and it was they who later told Zura Alikhadzhieva about what happened after her son was arrested.
All detainees were blindfolded, and a black bag was placed over Alikhadzhiev’s head. The military forbade their prisoners to talk. After some time, Ruslan Alikhadzhiev asked to loosen his handcuffs because his wrists were numb. The reaction was unexpected - one of the soldiers, instead of loosening the handcuffs, took off his watch, took away his documents and money.
The detained Chechens recalled that their “journey” lasted more than an hour. The men do not know where exactly they were taken. When the bandages were finally removed, the prisoners saw that they were in some kind of basement. They were all ordered to squat along the wall, told to remain silent and, apparently, to convince everyone, they were hit on the head with a metal rod. Then, one by one, they began to take them out of the basement into a “barn-like room,” where several masked servicemen began to interrogate them. The questions were the same for everyone: who they were, whether they took part in hostilities, and what they knew about Alikhadzhiev. Alikhadzhiev himself was not questioned then.
After the interrogations, the detainees were again blindfolded and returned to the basement, placed in a cramped cell. When the men removed the bandages, they discovered that Ruslan Alikhadzhiev was not among them. Five villagers spent the night in captivity, and the next morning they were bandaged again, put in an infantry fighting vehicle and taken somewhere. After about an hour and a half, everyone was ordered to get out of their cars and lie on the ground. The military ordered the prisoners not to move for 20 minutes, saying that otherwise they would all be shot. When they took off their bandages, they discovered that they were on the road leading from Shali to Avtury. Having caught a ride, the Chechens went to their native village.
Relatives have not received any news about Ruslan Alikhadzhiev since his arrest. Nevertheless, his mother and brother Ruslambek and his wife Zaret did not stop searching. They wrote countless complaints to the prosecutor's office and internal affairs bodies at all levels, addressed the administrative authorities of Chechnya, the special representative of the president in the republic for the protection of human rights and freedoms, and wrote in the media. But, except for several public human rights organizations, no one responded to the prayers of the Alikhadzhiev family. His relatives visited all the prisons of Chechnya, visited all the most remote places of the North Caucasus, but did not find any traces of him. And law enforcement agencies got off with formal replies that their requests were sent to one or another prosecutorial authority. At first, however, they confirmed the arrest of Alikhadzhiev, but then abandoned it.
On May 25, 2000, the then Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Valery Manilov, announced at a press conference that a large number of members of illegal armed groups had been arrested or destroyed. Listing their names, the general mentioned that Ruslan Alikhadzhiev was captured on May 20. And on June 1 of the same year, RIA Novosti reported that FSB officers had detained Aslan Maskhadov’s closest associate, Ruslan Alikhadzhiev. This message, citing anonymous sources, indicated that Alikhadzhiev had been arrested and was testifying about Maskhadov’s plans.
In September 2000, at a special meeting of the State Duma, First Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Biryukov was asked a question about Alikhadzhiev’s whereabouts. To which the answer was received: abducted from his own home in Shali in May 2000 by a group of unknown armed people. According to operational data, Mr. Biryukov said, in August a Chechen politician was killed by militants. In December, at the special request of the Commissioner for Human Rights in Chechnya, the prosecutor's office of the republic responded that in early July, the prosecutor's office of the Shali district had opened a criminal case on the fact of the disappearance of Alikhadzhiev under the article of the Criminal Code “kidnapping of people” and was investigating it.
A year later, in February 2001, at the request of the human rights organization Memorial about several cases of disappearances of people, the Chechen prosecutor’s office responded that neither the FSB nor the Ministry of Internal Affairs had arrested Alikhadzhiev and the investigation was ongoing. In August 2004, the ECHR requested relevant information about the progress of the investigation, but Strasbourg received a document stating that the investigation was continuing without any specific documents on the conduct of investigative actions. At the same time, the judges of the European Court were explained that the information on the case is secret, contains military information and information about witnesses, and therefore is not subject to disclosure. And if this information is so needed by the ECHR, then its delegation can come to Chechnya itself and get acquainted with the case materials without the right to make copies of them.
A year later, in December 2005, when the ECHR declared Alikhadzhiev’s mother’s complaint admissible, the Russian authorities sent a new document to Strasbourg. It reported that in October 2000, four of the people detained along with the former speaker of the Chechen parliament were interrogated as witnesses. And the fifth, according to the new version of the Russian authorities, was interrogated in March 2001 - just when Zura Alikhadzhieva filed her complaint to the ECHR. At the same time, the woman was recognized as a victim in the case of the abduction of her son. But this time, no more documents were received in Strasbourg.
The ECHR summarized that from 2000 to 2004, the investigation into the disappearance of Ruslan Alikhadzhiev was suspended and resumed 11 times, and as a result, the persons involved in the crime were never found.
The Russian side nevertheless asked that Zura Alikhadzhieva’s complaint be declared inadmissible on the grounds that she had not taken any measures to defend her alleged violations in national courts. But the applicant objected to this that, given the state of law enforcement and judicial authorities in Chechnya, it is completely impossible to do this. The European Court agreed with Ms. Alikhadzhieva’s argument, since similar arguments had already been presented to it regarding other similar complaints by Chechens.
The ECHR, as is known, uses case law in its practice - that is, if a precedent for similar violations of an article of the European Convention on Human Rights already exists, in its subsequent decisions the court simply indicates on the basis of which particular ruling it adopted earlier, or rejects certain evidence.
“As the court has already noted in many similar cases, the civil procedure for appealing illegal decisions of officials (in the courts of Chechnya - Ed. ) cannot be perceived as an effective remedy... Civil courts are not able to conduct an independent investigation if there is no conclusion about the end of the preliminary investigation in a criminal case, without a verdict that would indicate the specific culprits of the attack on a person that led to his death. Taking into account these circumstances, the objections presented are rejected,” the ECHR said in its ruling in the case of Zura Alikhadzhieva.
Representatives of the Russian Federation at the ECHR, in turn, noted that the applicant did not provide any evidence that Ruslan Alikhadzhiev was arrested and then destroyed. In addition, the persons who kidnapped the Chechen politician were not identified, and law enforcement agencies and the military denied that Alikhadzhiev was detained by their employees. However, the court found that it was the Russian authorities who were responsible for the disappearance and death of the former speaker of the Chechen parliament, since he was last seen surrounded by Russian military personnel.
The ECHR panel of seven judges found: Russia violated Art. 2 of the Convention (right to life) in connection with the disappearance of Ruslan Alikhadzhiev and in connection with the inability to conduct an effective investigation into the circumstances of the incident; violated Art. 3 of the Convention, because it failed to prevent the inhuman treatment to which the applicant’s son was subjected, and then also failed to investigate these facts; violated Art. 5 of the Convention, allowing the unlawful deprivation of liberty of Ruslan Alikhadzhiev; violated Art. 13 of the Convention, depriving the applicant and her son of the right to an effective remedy before the official authorities.
The ECHR ruled to compensate the moral suffering caused to Zura Alikhadzhieva and pay her 40 thousand euros, as well as another 4 thousand euros for the costs incurred to represent her interests in court.
The elderly woman never survived the suffering that befell her; she died of a heart attack in February of this year. Her second son, Ruslambek Alikhadzhiev, who at one time actively participated in the search for his brother, also disappeared without a trace in April 2005. The compensation awarded by the European Court of Human Rights should now be received by the wife of Ruslambek Alikhadzhiev, Zaret.