ECtHR awards compensation to mother of missing Chechen resident

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has found Russian authorities guilty in the case of kidnapping Aslanbek Saidakhmadov, a resident of Grozny, by law enforcers and ordered them to pay his mother compensation in the amount of 60,000 euros.

The ECtHR has ruled on Aslanbek Saidakhmadov's disappearance case of 2009: the court has found that in relation to Saidakhmadov, Russian authorities had violated the article on the right to life of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in relation to his mother, Maria Malaeva – the article prohibiting torture in connection with her moral sufferings caused by her son's disappearance. The ECtHR has awarded a compensation of 60,000 euros to Malaeva, the ECtHR has announced on its website.

Back on April 11, 2012, Maria Malaeva appealed to the Consolidated Mobile Group of Human Rights Defenders that worked in Chechnya, and said that on August 3, 2009, two unknown persons took her son Aslanbek away from her apartment. She applied to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) about the kidnapping of her son, but a criminal case was opened only on August 14, 2009. Later, it was repeatedly suspended, and on December 30, 2009, it was stopped completely – officers of the Chechen branch of the Russian MIA brought Aslanbek from Astrakhan to Grozny, where he explained during interrogation that no one had kidnapped him; and all this time he was with his aunt in Astrakhan.

After Saidakhmadov testified in this criminal case, he disappeared without a trace. On February 24, 2010, a criminal case was opened under the murder article.

Those involved in kidnapping and possible murder of Aslanbek Saidakhmadov have not yet been established.