Today the lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group of Russian human rights organizations, working in Chechnya, received a motivated appellate ruling of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic, issued with regard to the suit to defend one’s honor, dignity and business reputation of the Ministry of Interior of Chechnya against human rights defenders and Murad Amriyev who complained that he suffered from illegal actions of the police officers. Despite so far negative for human rights defenders result of the court hearing, the dissenting opinion of federal judge Daurkina, who, in essence, reveals the incompetence of her colleagues, cannot be called other than an achievement.
As we have previously reported, on 21 August 2015 the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic decided to affirm the previously passed ruling of the Leninsky District Court of Grozny, and dismiss the appellate complaints of the defendants. Previously the court of the first instance satisfied the claim of the Ministry of the Interior of the RF for Chechnya against Murad Amriyev and INGO «The Committee Against Torture», demanding to openly deny the information featured in the publications on website pytkam.net and on the website Grani.ru the access to which from the territory of Russia is blocked. At the same time the plaintiff was denied a compensation for moral damage.
In their ruling the judges referred to the decision of the Investigative Committee dated 14 April 2014 to refuse initiating criminal proceedings (by the way, already reversed by the Committee itself as ungrounded), as well as to the result of the agency check in the Ministry of the Interior, and finally pointed out that the conclusions of the District Court were «based on the law». The whole motivation part of the ruling was only a couple of sentences long.
However, one of the three judges disagreed to the opinion of her colleagues and expressed a «dissenting opinion». In its text federal judge Daurkina unequivocally points out that «none of the defendants arguments have been legally assessed». And further as the text goes: «The information contained on the website of the defendant has not been checked according to the procedure, established by law… The assessment has not been provided… No arguments have been mentioned… No grounds have been provided…».
According to lawyer of the human rights organization Anton Ryzhov, representing the interests of Murad Amriyev, the courts of both the instances passed abstract, general rulings, which lack specific information and do not contain the list of words and expressions, which have to be denied.«It turns out that the whole text of the publication on website pytkam.net has to be denied. But how can one deny the phrase, for example, stating that Murad Amriyev applied to human rights defenders, if he indeed applied to the Joint Mobile Group?! – Ryzhov wonders. – And the text contains enough of other such self-evident facts. Moreover, according to the courts’ conclusions, Amriyev has to deny the information contained on website Grani.ru, however, the representatives of this website have never been involved in the court proceedings and have not had any opportunity to present their own opinion. This is a serious procedural violation. Especially since Amriyev has never placed any information there himself».
«We hope that the compelling stand of judge Daurkina won’t provoke taking any measures against her, the measures of so called precautionary character, – lawyer of the Joint Mobile Group Dmitry Yalikov emphasizes. – We shall definitely appeal against the decision of the appellate court under cassational procedure; we also plan to lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against the violation of the right to freedom of expression».