#14
Financial Times (UK)
19 September 2001
Russia faces human rights charge by ex-prisoner
By Andrew Jack in Moscow
The Russian government was accused before the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday of breaches of the European Convention on
Human Rights in the first case brought against it by an individual Russian.
Valery Kalashnikov, head of the North-east Commercial Bank who was
convicted of embezzlement in 1999, is suing the Russian authorities for
alleged abuses after charges were first brought against him in 1995.
Mr Kalashnikov was held in a pre-trial detention centre in the far-eastern
Russian city of Magadan from June 1995 until he was eventually sentenced in
October 1999, and then returned to the detention centre after his release
from prison until new charges were dropped in June 2000.
He alleges that he was held in an over-crowded, noisy and insanitary cell
where prisoners had to sleep in shifts, live with inmates suffering from
tuberculosis and syphilis, was beaten up and refused visits by his family.
The case is the first to be brought solely against Russia since the country
ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998, in fulfilment of
its agreement to comply with its conditions so that it could join the
Council of Europe in 1996.
The outcome of the hearing - before seven judges including one Russian -
will be closely watched as the first of a large number of cases brought
against Russia since 1998, including many relating to human rights abuses
in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.
Mr Kalashnikov's case follows another appeal heard this summer by the court
in Strasbourg brought jointly against Moldova and Russia by a Moldovan man
detained in the Russian-dominated Transdnistr region of Moldova.
It will prove a test for Russia's criminal justice system, which President
Vladimir Putin has given top priority to reforming as part of his stated
aim to introduce a "dictatorship of the law".
By the end of last month, nearly 1,400 cases against Russia had been
registered for examination by the European court, of which 667 had been
declared inadmissible and 17 communicated to the authorities in Moscow for
a response.
Only those violating the European convention on human rights which have
been brought since Russia's ratification in 1998 are admissable to the
Strasbourg court, and then only if all domestic recourse has been exhausted
or the national judicial system is judged incapable of granting a fair trial.
