14:37, 25 January 2006

Shady action against rights defender

The trial of human rights defender Osman Boliyev, leader of the human rights organisation Romashka ("Camomile"), will continue in Dagestan on 30 January 2006. The previous hearing was postponed because of non-attendance on the part of prosecution witnesses whose whereabouts is unknown. The human rights activist is charged with illegal purchase, storage, and carrying of weapons (Part 1 of Article 222 of the Russian Criminal Code).

On 15 November 2005, traffic police officers convoyed Mr Boliyev, resident in Khasavyurt, to a local police station to examine his car which they said was like a recently hijacked one. On their way, however, Mr Boliyev's car was stopped by riot police officers. The traffic policemen passed him to the riot policemen and went away. The riot policemen delivered Mr Boliyev to the police station. There, the human rights defender was searched and a grenade, taken to pieces, was found on him.

In the opinion of lawyers who, with the assistance of the Public Verdict Foundation, defend the rights and interests of Mr Boliyev, there are a number of strange points in the prosecution materials.

"Firstly, the search was not conducted at the scene where Mr Boliyev was detained, but only at the District Division of Internal Affairs. If we examine this logic, Mr Boliyev could easily get rid of the grenade pieces while following the traffic policemen's car, but he did not do that," a press release of the foundation says. "Secondly, there was no description of the grenade in the documents submitted to the prosecutor's office. Thirdly, there were no interrogations of witnesses who had attended the search. (The interrogations were only submitted several days later.) Fourthly, there were no administrative detention materials among the documents submitted to the prosecutor's office for opening a criminal case."

In the opinion of a number of experts, the main reason for detaining and charging Mr Boliyev is his public activities. The Romashka organisation which Mr Boliyev heads is the initiator of a major legal action with regard to abduction of a local resident, Mr Israilov, by officers of the Khasavyurt City Division of Internal Affairs in Dagestan. Together with Karinna Moskalenko, a commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists and a legal expert for the International Protection Centre, Mr Boliyev drew up and filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. The court considered the complaint a priority one. Besides, Mr Boliyev made public the fact that officers of Dagestan's law enforcement agencies had been the cause of death of a six-year-old girl during a special operation for detaining crime suspects.