Advocate of Borozdinovskaya residents: judge refuses to request crime proofs

On January 25, the Presnenskiy Court of Moscow will continue the process on the suit of 42 inhabitants of the village of Borozdinovskaya of the Shelkovskoj District of Chechnya towards the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (RF). The claimants want to collect 126 million roubles from the Ministry as moral indemnification for the clean-up, undertaken in the village by the fighters of the "Vostok" (East) special battalion of the Chief Reconnaissance Department of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia on June 4, 2005. According to the version of the victims, during the raid over this settlement the militaries had burnt several households and killed two local residents; eleven more persons disappeared.

"Judge Mikhailov is openly refusing to request the proofs and interferes with collection of them. I consider it as the judge's bias. The process is sooner political than civil," Ramazan Rajabov, advocate of the Borozdinovskaya residents, has told the correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot."

"At the court session on January 17, the judge demanded to justify the moral damage of each of the 42 claimants separately. He also declared that individual suits should be lodged by each of the 42 persons," told the advocate.