Bury your father in your native land

On June 6, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on a complaint filed by the family of the first president of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, who was assassinated in March 2005. The judges ruled: Russia is not responsible for Maskhadov's death. But she violated a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, refusing to extradite the body of the murdered president

All of us, my mother and sister Fatima, have been waiting for this decision of the Strasbourg Court for eight years. Immediately after the death of my father, after the Russian authorities refused to give us his body for burial, we filed a complaint with Strasbourg. It is very important for us that the ECtHR condemned Russia for not handing over the body of the head of our family. What we originally wanted to achieve, we have achieved and now we will demand the execution of the court decision: that we be given the body of our father in order to bury him according to Muslim and Chechen customs. We are not going to make any policy on this. We repeatedly appealed to the Russian authorities, they refused us and said that if we hand over the body of Aslan Maskhadov, then he will be buried in Chechnya and pilgrims will go there. But pilgrimage to graves is forbidden in Islam. And I am against it.

Eight years have passed since my father was killed in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt. We know that his body was taken first to Khankala for identification, and then to Rostov, to the forensic laboratory, and from there the body disappeared. I think that he was not buried on Chechen soil.

Of course, we cannot agree that Russia is not to blame for my father's death. Who is to blame then? After all, this is the main person in Russia who gave the order for a special operation. After its completion, Patrushev reported to Putin: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, based on the operational information that I reported to you earlier, we today in the Chechen Republic, in the settlement of Tolstoy-Yurt, carried out by the FSB, the Special Purpose Center, a special operation, as a result of which Aslan Maskhadov destroyed. Putin answered him: "Present all the participants of the event for state awards." This is an important fact confirming that they planned the murder and killed. It is known that gas was used during the father's murder, then explosives and special weapons. We know that four or five bullets were removed from my father's body. He was shot at from different angles and from different sides. And according to the Kremlin, Aslan Maskhadov was killed by his nephew Viskhan Khadzhimuratov. He spent some time in prison, but then he was released. I don't think Viskhan is to blame. I spoke to people who were there, in the house where my father was killed. I know that together with representatives of the Russian special services there, in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt (in the Grozny region of Chechnya. - The New Times), doctors came there. And when my father's body was taken out of the basement, the doctors rushed to him to prevent him from dying. I think that the father was destined for the fate of Saddam Hussein. They wanted to take Maskhadov alive and then kill or execute him, as they did with other Chechens who fell into the hands of the Russian military. But that's another story. Now the main thing for us is to achieve the execution of the decision of the European Court. And bury my father.