Ongoing Failure to Inform Aggrieved Parties about the Investigation

The European Court has established that one of the elements of an effective investigation is the requirement to provide information to the victim’s relatives about the investigation.[52] The court has confirmed this principle in cases from Chechnya, holding in virtually all cases that the Russian authorities have not to properly informed the applicants about the investigations. In at least 70 cases (as of September 24, 2009) concerning disappearances in Chechnya the European Court found that the government’s conduct of its investigation and its superficial responses to the applicants’ complaints and requests for information constituted inhuman treatment with respect to the applicants, contrary to article 3 of the European Convention.[53]

In Bazorkina v. Russia, the first disappearance case from Chechnya that it ruled on, the court noted that in response to Fatima Bazorkina’s complaints, the Russian government mostly denied the government’s responsibility for the disappearances, or simply informed Bazorkina that an investigation was ongoing. Taking the failures of the investigation and the indifferent response on the part of the government together, the court found that “the applicant suffered, and continues to suffer, distress and anguish as a result of the disappearance of her son and of her inability to find out what happened to him. The manner in which her complaints have been dealt with by the authorities must be considered to constitute inhuman treatment contrary to Article 3.”[54] The court echoed this language in more than 70 subsequent judgments.[55]

Despite the European Court’s consistently strong language on this manner of inhuman treatment, applicants to the European Court interviewed by Human Rights Watch continue to receive no or largely pro forma information about investigations after the judgments became final, even after they submitted requests to the authorities for information. Many did not know whether the investigation was still ongoing or had been closed.

Applicants Questioned but Given No Information

For example, in the case Isayeva, Yusupova, and Bazayeva v. Russia, the European Court found Russia responsible for the death of several of the applicants’ relatives during an aerial attack on a civilian convoy in 1999.[56] The applicants became aware that the investigation had been reopened when they were summonsed for questioning in 2008, but have had no information about the investigation since. Human Rights Watch spoke to two of the applicants in the case. Medka Isayeva stated:

They invited me to come to [speak to military investigators at] Khankala once or twice. This was some time last year. ... They asked the same questions as before: what time it all happened, who was killed, where are they buried and so on. I don’t know what happened since then. They said that they would call, but I never heard anything. I didn’t receive any letters either.[57]

Zina Yusupova was asked similar questions by investigators in 2008, who were particularly focused on the time of the bombing and pressured her to state that it happened in late afternoon, rather than in early afternoon, as she recalls. She has had no news of the investigation since then.[58]

Eight other applicants interviewed by Human Rights Watch also stated that they had been questioned by investigators since the European Court judgments on their cases, but told Human Rights Watch that the interrogations simply repeated interrogations from the earlier investigations. They also received no substantive information or no information at all regarding ongoing proceedings in the investigation.[59] For example, according to Abubukar Gaitaev, whose brother was disappeared in January 2003, “They [the investigators] questioned me and the other family members, asking us how [Musa] had been abducted, what we had seen, if we had any information on his whereabouts, etc. It wasn’t any different from the kinds of questions we had been asked at the first interrogations, years ago.”[60]

Asmart Baysayeva, whose case includes a video depicting her husband being detained by federal forces, described to Human Rights Watch a recent interrogation, which was not only perfunctory, but humiliating, suggesting that her husband had voluntarily absconded, perhaps even with another woman:

They asked all the old questions. ‘Where did my husband go? Did he have another wife? Could he simply have run off with a mistress?’ They’ve been asking me those questions for nine years... This is the tenth investigator I’ve been talking to, and every time the case is assigned to a new investigator I realize that he hasn’t even watched the video of my husband [being detained by] Russian servicemen, which is part of the case file. ... What am I still hoping for? All I want is for those servicemen—their faces are all on that video ...—to be brought here and interrogated.[61]

In other cases, investigators have not contacted applicants at all following the judgments, either to summon them for questioning or to inform them of the status of the investigation.  Zainap Tangiyeva, whose mother, father, and uncle were killed in 1999 during a massive sweep operation in the Staropromoslovsky district of Grozny, has had no information from investigators more than one year since her judgment became final.[62] “When the judgment was passed, it was a very good feeling,” she told Human Rights Watch. “It was important to know that Russia was found responsible and that the authorities are required to investigate the crime. But, the authorities never contacted me about [the investigation]. No officials have contacted me, no new investigation seems to be happening. The prosecutor’s office has not been in contact with me even once since the judgment came.”[63]

No Meaningful Response or No response to Information Requests

In numerous cases, applicants and their representatives have sent requests for information to investigators and prosecutors, yet have received only formalistic responses or no response at all.

Russian Justice Initiative (RJI), an organization representing victims in dozens of cases before the European Court, has submitted separate letters to relevant prosecutorial authorities in at least 19 cases, asking detailed questions about the progress of the investigation since the court judgments became final and requesting that the authorities take certain investigative measures, if they had not yet done so.[64]

In many cases, the authorities have not replied at all several months after the request was submitted.[65]  With regards to 10 cases, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Chechnya sent a one-page letter to RJI, informing the lawyers that the cases had been transferred to its Second Department and that the “progress and results of the investigation have been placed under the control of the prosecutor’s office of the republic.”[66] The letter contained no other information about the investigation.

Even in cases in which the authorities have submitted several letters to the applicants and their representatives, a closer examination of the correspondence reveals that it contains little substantive information. For example, although investigators have sent a number of documents to the applicants and their representatives in Utsaeva and Others v. Russia concerning the disappearance of four men during a special operation in Novye Atagi in 2002, the letters either indicate that the case is with investigators or contain vague descriptions of investigative actions. Despite claiming that a “significant volume of investigative and other procedural measures,” have been taken, the investigation has produced no results.[67] Belita Dadayeva, mother of disappeared Movsar Taisumov and an applicant in the Utsaeva and Others v. Russia case, told Human Rights Watch that she still awaits the investigation to reach a conclusion: “We are still waiting, hoping. ... [Our sons] have to be somewhere. Or their bodies. We cannot even bury them. If we could only do that it would at least give us peace. But there is nothing, no traces. And all I do is think of [my disappeared son] day after day, each and every moment.”[68]

On June 10, 2009, Russian Justice Initiative sent information request letters regarding five other cases, but to date has received no replies at all.[69] An applicant in one of these cases, Zara Khadzhialiyeva, whose two sons were detained and later killed by Russian forces, voiced her anger about the lack of an effective investigation to Human Rights Watch: “The investigation is not going anywhere. After the [European Court] judgment, nothing changed, no action has been taken. We are hoping for the killers to be found and punished. [It seems that] this [justice] system protects the criminals instead of punishing them.”[70]

The Russian government’s continued inability or unwillingness to conduct meaningful investigations and to provide substantive responses to the inquiries of the victims’ relatives represents not only a failure to implement European Court judgments, but also continued inhuman treatment of the applicants. The situation is further exacerbated by the government repudiating the European Court judgments and continuing to deny culpability for the violations in a number of cases, as described above.