Today, on 5 April 2016, lawyers of interregional non-governmental organization «The Committee Against Torture» submitted a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of Madnyat Dyshneeva, whose son Husein Badurgov disappeared without a trace in Grozny in July 2012. Human rights defenders think that the Russian Federation violated Husein’s right to life and Madnyat’s right to efficient investigation
(Photo: Husein Badurgov)
On 30 July 2012 Husein Badurgov’s relatives applied to Joint Mobile Group of human rights defenders working in the Chechen Republic.
They told the human rights defenders that in July 2012 Husein together with his wife and a kid moved to live to Grozny. On 10 July about 9 a.m. Husein called his sister Petimat and told her that he was going for a job interview at one of the shops of Grozny. After the job interview Husein called again and started to tell about its results. At this moment Petimat heard over the phone some man talking to Husein, after that the connection was lost. She started to call her brother back, but no one answered. Since that moment Husein has never made a contact. All subsequent attempts of Husein’s relatives to search him or obtain information about his whereabouts ended in failure.
The investigation of the criminal in connection with Husein’s missing has been going on the fourth year already. Attempts to insist on the investigative authorities’ effective investigation ended in failure – the investigation was suspended seven times. Lawyers of Joint Mobile Group, representing the interests of Husen Badurgov’s relatives, each time successfully insisted on declaring these suspensions illegal, after that another suspension of the criminal case followed without conducting any additional investigative activities.
«The European Court has already pointed out in its rulings that investigations of similar kind in the Chechen Republic are especially non-effective. In this specific case the criminal case was opened only two months after the relatives applied to law-enforcement agencies which did not allow performing necessary investigative activities at the initial most important stage of the investigation, – lawyer for international law of INGO «The Committee for Prevention of Torture» Ekaterina Vanslova. – Later on the investigators suspended the criminal case over and over again and never conducted the necessary investigative activities, many of which have already lost their significance by now. For example, not all possible witnesses in the case were questioned, phone subscribers, who had telephone conversations with Badurgov, were not identified and questioned, it was not established whether Badurgov was on the territory of Ingushetia on the day of his disappearance, taking into account the information that his mobile phone was registered on that day in the Nesterovskaya village of the Sunzhenskiy District of Ingushetia. This and other discrepancies of the investigation have been repeatedly pointed at by the Investigative Committee’s Forensics Department and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Chechen Republic, but they have never been rectified».
The investigative authorities neither established the whereabouts of Husein Badurgov, nor found those who were involved in his disappearance. Considering the investigation of this case to be non-effective, the lawyers of the Committee Against Torture have lodged today a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.