The ECHR communicated complaints from relatives of people missing in Chechnya

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) communicated the complaints of the relatives of Khusein Badurgov and Khadizhat Elimkhanova, who went missing in Chechnya in 2012 and 2013, respectively. This was reported by the Committee against Torture.

Badgurov disappeared on July 10, 2012. He talked to his sister on the phone; She heard a man contact Hussein, after which the connection was lost. A criminal case into the unknown disappearance was opened only two months later. According to the applicants, this did not allow the necessary investigative actions to be carried out promptly at the initial, most important stage. “For example, all possible witnesses in the case were not interrogated, the subscribers who carried out telephone conversations with Badurgov were not identified and interrogated as witnesses, it was not established whether Badurgov was on the territory of Ingushetia on the day of his disappearance, given the information that his mobile the phone was registered that day in the village of Nesterovskaya, Sunzhensky district of the Republic of Ingushetia,” human rights activists list.

Elimkhanova was kidnapped on July 6, 2013. According to the mother, the girl was pushed into a car by two unknown men, one of whom was dressed in camouflage uniform and had a pistol. The theft was caught on a surveillance camera near the entrance to the store; the investigation, the Committee notes, did not even use these records.

The complaints were combined with two other complaints concerning enforced disappearances. “The European Court has repeatedly made decisions on similar complaints concerning the unknown disappearances of people in the Chechen Republic, and has identified the problem of failure to investigate these crimes as systemic,” the Committee quotes the words of the organization’s lawyer, Ekaterina Vanslova.