Backgrounder on the Case of Kheda Kungaeva

On March 27, 2000, Kheda Kungaeva, an eighteen-year-old woman, was taken from her home in Chechnya, beaten, raped, and murdered. On February 28, 2001, the Rostov District Military Court will try Col. Yuri Budanov for Kungaeva's murder. It is the first and only case in which Russian authorities promptly and publicly acknowledged a crime, perpetrated by Russian federal forces against civilians in Chechnya, that constitutes a gross violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.