20 May 2010, 18:00
European Court held that Russia was to pay 100.000 euro in respect of the death of a Chechen citizen
Today, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg fined Russia for 100.000 euros, acknowledging that the Russian authorities were responsible for the death of a Chechen Walid Dzhabrailov in 2003.
Relatives of the deceased sued at law. According to the trial data, in February 2003, a group of armed men in masks and camouflage broke into their house. They tied Walid Dzhabrailov and took him and his junior brother Aslan to an undisclosed location.
Aslan, who appeared as one of the plaintiffs, said that he and Walid were locked separately in underground cells. In Aslan's words, he heard his brother's cries during the interrogation. Himself, he was beaten and given no water, no food for two days to make him confess his involvement in an unlawful armed formation.
As Aslan said, two days later with a package on his head, he was taken out of a cell, put in a car and driven to an abandoned building of the chemical plant in Grozny, where they shot him in the head; after that the bodies of Aslan and Walid were thrown into a ditch, pitched with explosives and set alight, "Gazeta.Ru" reports.
But still alive Aslan escaped and stopped a car on the street, which drove him home. The same day relatives found Walid's body in the place Aslan left it.
Plaintiffs assured that Russian soldiers are guilty of their relatives' abduction and assault, and of Walid's murder as well. The Dzhabrailovs repeatedly appealed to Russia's courts but remained dissatisfied with the action of local investigative authorities and filed a lawsuit in the European Court of Human Rights.
