CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Corrupt Russian 'justice' shows mercy to war criminals if their victims are Chechens  Thu Jan 15, 2009 7:10 pm | |
| MOSCOW: A former Russian tank commander imprisoned for murdering a young Chechen woman was freed Thursday before completing his sentence, provoking exasperation in Chechnya and rekindling animosities born of nearly a decade of intermittent war.
The former officer, Yuri Budanov, a decorated Russian Army colonel before he was stripped of his rank, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003. But a court in the Ulyanovsk region agreed last month to grant Budanov early parole for good behavior. A last-minute appeal by the victim's lawyer failed to keep him in custody.
News of the court's decision last month to grant parole led to protest rallies in Chechnya, a mostly Muslim republic in Russia's Caucasus region.
Human rights groups and Chechen officials, two sides that often clash, have raised a single voice of alarm over the soldier's release.
"It shows that Russian justice shows mercy to war criminals if their victims are Chechens," said Natalya Estemirova of Memorial, a human rights group in Grozny, the Chechen capital.
Budanov is the highest-ranking officer among only a handful of Russian soldiers punished for what human rights groups contend were numerous atrocities committed by federal forces in two wars against Chechen separatists. For many in Chechnya. he has become a hated symbol of those atrocities.
He has admitted to abducting Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen woman, and strangling her in a fit of rage in his quarters in March 2000, saying he suspected her of being an enemy sniper. In proceedings that highlighted the capriciousness of Russian justice, he was initially acquitted on the grounds that in was temporarily insane at the time of the murder, but was convicted in a second trial.
The conviction raised expectations among battle-weary Chechens that their submission to Russian authority would at least open avenues for addressing war-time grievances. Few others were punished, however, despite voluminous evidence of extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture committed by Russian soldiers.
Although the fight against separatists has largely ended and Chechnya is now firmly under Moscow's control, the republic has yet to truly come to terms with the years of conflict that left thousands dead.
Rather, open discussion of the war and its legacy has been stifled by a Kremlin-installed government, which, under Chechnya's strong-arm president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has imposed a whitewashed official history that has sought to play down Russian responsibility.
In a region where loyalties to clan can supersede national pride and murderous blood feuds can rage for decades, some say Budanov's release threatens to disrupt Chechnya's tenuous stability and undermine Kremlin control.
"This will only benefit the militants, because for them there is no clearer demonstration of the futility of appealing to the Russian authorities," said Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer for Kungayeva's family.
Even Kadyrov, a former separatist fighter who later became a loyal Kremlin backer, has spoken out against Budanov's release.
"Even if he repented, someone convicted for such a brutal and cynical killing of an innocent underage schoolgirl should not be granted parole," Kadyrov said this week, Interfax reported. "Moreover, he deserves a more severe punishment."
Chechnya's human rights ombudsman, Nudri Nukhazhiev, has released evidence he says links Budanov to several other killings during his tour in Chechnya and has called on prosecutors to open a new case against him.
"Budanov is a criminal who represents a danger to society," Nukhazhiev said in a statement. "He is capable of committing further crimes and should be imprisoned for life."
Austria holds murder suspect
The Austrian authorities said Wednesday that the police were holding a suspect in the brazen public killing of a Chechen exile who had formally accused Kadyrov, the Chechen president, of ordering and participating in kidnappings and torture, C.J. Chivers reported.
The suspect is a Chechen who had been granted asylum and had lived in Austria for years, said Gerhard Jarosch, a spokesman for the public prosecutor's office. He declined to name the suspect.
The slain man, Umar Israilov, 27, was a former Chechen rebel who later worked for Kadyrov before defecting and accusing him of gruesome human rights violations, including using an electrical device to deliver shocks to men who had been illegally detained by forces under his command. Israilov was shot on a street in Vienna on Tuesday in what the police said was an apparent contract killing.
Israilov had sought protection by the Austrian authorities and had told investigators that he had been pressed by an emissary from Kadyrov to withdraw the human rights complaint, which he had made to Russian prosecutors and to the European Court of Human Rights.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/15/europe/chechnya.php
_________________
Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann |
|
