By Olga Allenova

In Kommersant #115

Фото: 1 из 5

Обращение 89 потерпевших от теракта в Беслане было составлено по итогам трех судебных процессов

It became known yesterday that the European Court of Human Rights received a complaint from 89 victims of the Beslan terror act. The victims intend to show that their relatives were denied their right to life, and that an objection investigation and effective legal defense was denied them in their homeland.

The fifty-page complaint was sent to Strasbourg by the ‘Voice of Beslan’ organization on June 25th. Yesterday the clerk of court reported that the appeal by the residents of Beslan had been registered as #26562/07, and titled ‘Kesayeva and 88 others versus Russia’. “The complaint hasn’t yet been accepted for processing since the plaintiffs have promised to send supplementary documents,” added the European court’s chancellery.

The appeal by victims of the terror act is comprised of the results of three court cases: one over the sole surviving terrorist Nurpasha Kulayev, who was sentenced to life imprisonment; another over the three former heads of the Right-bank ministry of the interior (i.e.: the federal police service), who were accused of negligence in administrative court; and the last over the results of hearings in connection with the (Osetian) general prosecutor’s refusal to initiate a criminal case against members of the hostage rescue headquarters in Beslan.

During the case against the terrorist Kulayev, according to the victims, not all the witnesses were heard, including the members of the operational headquarters. This violated their right to an objective court hearing. The victims appealed this decision twice, which is necessary in order for an appeal to go to the Euro-court. The North Osetian Supreme Court, however, has still not examined the appeal against the decision on the policemen, and so the European Court cannot accept the Beslan residents’ appeal of this case.

“I think that we won’t have to wait a long time for this decision, and we’ll send the necessary documents very soon,” declared the leader of the ‘Voice of Beslan’ organization, Ella Kesayeva. “We’re certain that the amnesty with regards to members of the counter-terrorist operation, which the heads of the Right-bank interior ministry used, was written with only one aim in mind – to protect all who could be brought to account in this case. Even if we manage to bring Dzasokhov (the ex-president of North Osetia) into the case, he’ll automatically be given amnesty as a participant of the counter-terrorism operation that took place from September 1 through 5 of 2004!”

In the resolution portion of the appeal by the Beslan residents to the Euro-court, it states that, with regards to the victims, the European Human Rights Convention was violated, specifically the right to life, the right to an objective investigation and effective legal defense. “The government, which must provide for the safety of its citizens, did not prevent the entry of rebel gunmen into Beslan, or the seizure of hostages, and in this manner violated all our rights to life,” it states in the document. “After the seizure of hostages the authorities did not protect the lives of the maximum number of persons possible by means of compromises and negotiations. While carrying out an assault, they used tanks and flamethrowers, though nowhere in the world is such heavy weaponry used in freeing hostages. In such a manner a large number of people died not at the hands of the gunmen, but from the actions of the operational headquarters. After the terror act the authorities did not conduct an investigation into all the reasons and circumstances of the tragedy, and the guilty were not brought to account, while in the courts that reached decisions under orders of the authorities, our right to a legal defense was violated.”

Assisting in putting together the victims’ complaint and putting it into the proper legal format were lawyers from the Center for International Protection, which specializes in European Court cases and has already represented the interests of ‘Nord-Ost’ victims at the court, as well as several hundred other Russians. However, as the center’s deputy director Valentin Moiseev declared, “the procedural passage of the case through the Euro-court is complex and slow, so one must be prepared to wait more than a year.” He noted: “Since 2002 the Euro-court has decided 30 of our cases, but right now there are another 400 cases that the Center is representing, so there have been results.”

“If the case is given priority, it could take about two years,” declared Olga Mikhailova, attorney for the victims. “We are hoping strongly for this. However, the court often gives priority to those cases where there is a danger to someone’s life. The victims at ‘Nord-Ost’ weren’t given such priority, and their case is still being examined.”

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