European Court rules in favour of Russian Chernobyl liquidators

Lawyer Oksana Suprunova who defended the interests of a group of Bataisk Chernobyl liquidators at the Strasbourg Court told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that the European Court for Human Rights had concluded (and it concerns all the Russian Chernobyl liquidators) that the cancellation of the lower court instance's ruling in favour of Chernobyl liquidators by the supervisory instance was a breach of the human right for a fair trial.

In August-September 2003, 44 Chernobyl liquidators from Bataisk (Rostov Region) filed a complaint to the European court for Human Rights. On January 6, 2003, the Bataisk City court judged on the need to index the sums the Chernobyl liquidators received in compensation of the harm inflicted to their health in the process of liquidation of the accident's implications. Later, the indexing was cancelled by the decision of the Presidium of the Rostov Regional Court.

Earlier, 7 persons were the winners in the trial against the Russian Federation, now - 12 persons more, the remaining complaints are still considered in Strasbourg.

Today, the decision of the Presidium of the Regional Court was cancelled. According to Oksana Suprunova, respective amendments have been made in the legislation on Chernobyl liquidators' protection where no mechanism of payment indexing was previously stipulated.