18 April 2009, 06:00
In Chechnya, convicts' families urge to bring inmates closer to their homes
In Chechnya, families of the inmates convicted for grave crimes under articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation have addressed the so-called UFSIN (Russian corrective administration) with a request to transfer their relatives for serving their punishments closer to their homes - to have opportunities to visit them.
Chechen advocate Doka Itslaev told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that now Chechnya faces a sharp problem that convicts to long terms of imprisonment are sent to corrective establishments located very far from their residence. Thus, inmates' relatives cannot visit them, which is a breach of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
"A criminal is sentenced to imprisonment, but it doesn't mean that he or she should lose all the ties with the relatives. The Criminal Execution Code assumes that convicts and their relatives have the right to meet each other. And when a person is sentenced to 20 years and sent from Chechnya somewhere to Magadan, his relatives have no funds or time to go there to visit him," said the lawyer.
According to his story, this problem is topical not only for Chechnya, and not only for the republics of the Caucasus. But for Chechnya, it is especially sharp. Convicts' relatives often have no chance to visit a corrective establishment in a remote region - either they have no money, or they have small children and nobody to take care of them, or poor health condition.
Now, as he said, relatives and lawyers try to solve this problem in the legal way.
See earlier report: "Human rights activists speak about torturing Chechens in Russian prisons".
Author: Dmitry Florin Source: CK correspondent
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