Moscow urges Europe court to shun politics after Chechnya ruling

MOSCOW, July 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has called for European courts to issue rulings free of politics after the European Court of Human Rights obliged the government to pay compensation to a Chechen woman whose son disappeared in Chechnya.

The Strasbourg-based court ruled July 27 the Russian government should pay $44,000 to the woman. The Foreign Ministry said the investigation was not exhaustive.

"We hope all European Court of Human Rights rulings will be unbiased and impartial and will be adopted free of whatever political motives and based on a thorough analysis of all the circumstances in the case," the ministry said.

The ECHR ruled in favor of Fatima Bazorkina, a Chechnya resident whose son, Khadzhimurat Yandiyev, 25, has been missing since 2000. The court found that authorities had violated the European Convention on Human Rights and accused them of failing to protect Yandarbiyev from ill treatment and conducting a thorough investigation into his disappearance.

The judgment posted on the Strasbourg court's Web site says Bazorkina has not heard from her son since he went to Grozny, Chechnya's capital, in August 1999.

On February 2, 2000, she said she saw her son being interrogated by a Russian officer in a television news program. She later obtained a full copy of the recording, made by a reporter for Russia's NTV television and CNN. At the end of the questioning the officer in charge gave orders to soldiers to "finish off" and "shoot" her son. The officer was identified as Colonel General Alexander Baranov. He later said he had intended to stop Yandarbiyev's aggressive behavior.

Bazorkina immediately started a search for her son, visiting detention centers and prisons and applying to various authorities. In August 2000, she was informed that her son was not being held in any prison in Russia, according to the investigation materials.

Chechnya's prosecutors opened an investigation into his abduction in July 2001 and he was put on a missing persons list. Investigators established that Yandarbiyev had been detained on February 2, 2000 but handed over to Justice Ministry servicemen for transportation to a pre-trial detention center. He did not arrive at any detention center and his whereabouts could not be established.

Bazorkina applied to the European court in 2001.

The Foreign Ministry said Russia, a member of the Council of Europe and signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, was continuing to study the ruling.

Respected daily Kommersant said Friday Tatyana Kasatkina, executive director of Russia's Memorial rights group, had hailed the decision adding that more abduction investigations would follow.

"Our lawyers have prepared over 50 such cases to be handed over to the Strasbourg court," Kasatkina said.

The paper also cited independent abduction statistics for Chechnya: rights groups said more than 3,000 people had been reported missing in the republic since 1999, the start of the second military campaign.