FIRST PROCESS AGAINST RUSSIAN OFFICER WAYS MURDER ON
TSCHETSCHENIN








MOSCOW, 2 March (RIA "Nowosti" rIA-"Nowosti"-Korrespondent).  For the
first time a member of the Russian army must answer for itself
publicly before court for crimes in the abtruennigen conflict area
Chechnya.  The military court in the southRussian city Rostow at the
Don opened the procedure on Wednesday against the former commander of
a tank regiment because of murder at a 18-jaehrigen Tschetschenin in
March 2000.  The human right commissioner of the Council of Europe,
Alvaro Gil Robles, expressed himself in the Chechnian city Gudermes
anxiously over human right offences in the Caucasus republic.

" the people does not believe to it first results of the legal
proceedings to the staatsmacht against criminals sees ", said Gil
Robles after a meeting with the Chechnya administration in Gudermes,
used from Russia.  Colonel Juri Budanow who is before court should be
victim Elsa Kungajewa from their homeland village to have kidnapped,
strike and suffocate later.  The Russian television showed pictures of
the negotiation.  The process was suspended on Friday for some days.


The Russian guidance had a crime of its soldiers at the Chechnian
civilian population after the arrest Budanows for the first time
publicly admitted.  The Council of Europe threw to the Russian law in
the past repeats a Nichteingreifen with crimes against indifferent
ones in Chechnya forwards.  After reports from human right
organization army members in hundreds of cases are men, women and
children in the abtruennigen Caucasus republic to have kidnapped,
torture or kill.

So far 58 criminal procedures were initiated against Russian soldiers
in Chechnya, indicated the highest military public prosecutor of the
country, Mikhail Kislizyn.  Twelve procedures were already concluded.
  Among other things two time soldiers for an armed robbery were
condemned to detentions by nine and twelve years.  The court hearings
were not public.

At the outskirts of a town of the Chechnian capital Grosny several
further man corpses in a mass grave were discovered.  Already on
weekend in a grave in a destroyed summer-house settlement with Grosny
16 corpses of killed Tschetschenen had been discovered.

With a conversation with of Russia Minister of Justice Juri Tschaika
Gil Robles appreciated the decision made by Russian president Vladimir
Putin on Friday to take a part off of the Russian troops from the
abtruennigen republic.  Besides the human right commissioner
appreciated the gradual reconstruction of the court system in the
Tschetschenenrepublik.