Nura Luluyeva

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Nura Luluyeva (Chechen: Нура Лулуева) (1960-2000) was a Chechen woman who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by unidentified Russian servicemen in 2000. No one was ever punished for the crime by the Russian state.

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[edit] Disappearance

On June 3, 2000, Nura Luluyeva (an unemployed nurse and kindergarten teacher and the mother of four children, ages six to 21[1]) was selling strawberries on a market on Mozdokskaya Street of Grozny, the Chechen capital, when a group of about 20 masked Russian servicemen suddenly raided the market. The troops used an armoured personnel carrier (APC) with a hull number 110 and a witness said the leader of the operation, a Russian, told her that he was from the FSB and "some of their guys were killed there". They abducted Luluyeva along two other women, her cousins Markha Gakayeva (b. 1962) and Raisa Gakayeva (b. 1964) and at least one other person. A hood was put over Nura's head and she was never seen alive again.[2]

A search for Nura by her husband Said-Alvi Luluyev, a former Soviet judge from the city of Gudermes, did not bring any results, despite contacting authorities from different ministries at various levels, petitioning, and even personally looking for her in a detention centres and prisons in Chechnya and beyond in North Caucasus There was also no record of any official operation conducted on Mozdokskaya Street on this day.[3]

[edit] Mass grave

Eight months later, in February 2001, dead bodies of the three missing women were uncovered among some mostly 51 disfigured corpses in a mass grave less than a mile from Khankala, the main Russian military base in Chechnya. Many of the bodies found there were bound and blindfolded. As the bodies were in an advanced stage of decomposition they could be identified as Luluyeva and her cousins only by their earrings and clothes. An autopsy showed that Luluyeva died from a strong blow to the head with a solid blunt object some three to ten months before the discovery of the corpse.[3]

[edit] European Court of Human Rights

On November 10, 2006, the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) found that Russia had violated the European Convention on Human Rights on five separate counts. In the judgement, the Court announced that it "could not but conclude that Nura Luluyeva was apprehended and detained by state servicemen. There existed a body of evidence that attained the standard of proof 'beyond reasonable doubt', which made it possible to hold the state authorities responsible for Nura Luluyeva's death."[3]

As of 2008, like in the other cases of the EHCR rulings against Russia, no one was punished for the crime by the Russian state.

[edit] References

  1. ^ DISCOVERY OF GRIM DEATHS UNABATED, The Jamestown Foundation, March 20, 2001
  2. ^ The "Disappearance" of Nura Lulueva, Markha Gakaeva, and Raisa Gakaeva (Raid on northern market in Grozny, June 3, 2000), Human Rights Watch, 2001
  3. ^ a b c CASE OF LULUYEV AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA, European Court of Human Rights, 9 November 2006

[edit] External links