Human Rights Center "Memorial"

To the Minister of Justice of the Kingdom of Denmark
Lene Espersen

06.11.2002

Madame Minister!

We venture to turn to you ( in this open letter) in connection with the Russian Federation's request to have Akhmed Zakaev, currently detained in Denmark, extradited to Russia.

We don t know which documents the General Procurator s office of the Russian Federation presented to Denmark officials to prove its statement that Mr.Zakayev had been involved in committing crimes on the territory of Russie .

We feel confident that the Danish justice authorities would most meticulously look into those materials and pass their knowledgeable judgment in keeping with the provisions of the applicable international law.

However, irrespective of whether the charges against A, Zakaev come to be substantiated or non-substantiated, we would like the following circumstance to be taken into account when passing a decision on the question of possible extradition.

Article 3 of the "Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment" places a ban on extradition of any person, irrespective of his/her culpability, to other states provided there are serious grounds to believe that there is a risk of torture being used against that person in those countries. Notably, "for the presence of such grounds to be determined, the cognizant authorities shall take into account all circumstances relating to the case in question, including, the given country maintaining the ongoing practice of fierce, gross and massive violations of human rights", according to the Convention.

Given the aforesaid, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that, regrettably, the inquest and investigation authorities of the Russian Federation continue to broadly maintain the practice of torture and cruel treatment of the persons either detained or arrested (see the Attachments: ).

Over the past years our organization has been monitoring human rights in the Chechen Republic, while trying to draw the attention of Russian and world community to the persisting massive violations of human rights in order to help protect the victims of the ongoing conflict. We have every ground to confirm that the practice of torture and cruel treatment of the individuals accused of participating in unlawful armed formations or assisting those elements had become systemic in character. There have been reports of numerous cases of the detained persons just disappearing in the inquest stage. On several occasions the dead bodies of those individuals (bearing the traces of torture and marks of violent death) later had been uncovered by the locals (see the Attachments: ...).

In the years of the second war (unleashed in the fall of 1999) in the Chechen Republic, the Russian federal authorities have detained a large number of Chechens, some of those including two high-ranking officials from the Maskhadov administration and the elected legislature established in Chechnya in 1997: Tourpal-Ali Atgireev, Vice-Premier of the Chechen Government; and Rouslan Alikhadzhiev, Speaker of the Chechen Parliament. They both were reported to have had a tragic end. Tourpal-Ali Atgireev was sentenced to do time in prison where he shortly died. Rouslan Alikhadzhiev disappeared without any trace following his detention (see the Attachment).

We would like to draw your special attention to the sufferings of the individuals sentenced to long (or life) prison terms, which would inevitably happen to Akhmed Zakaev no matter whether he comes to be found guilty of being an accomplice to terrorism or not, should he be turned over to the Russian justice authorities. Just to illustrate, for you to have an idea how the current convicts are treated in Russian penitentiary facilities, we attach the article "In the "Ku" Position" carried by the national daily "Izvestiya" and written to tell about the prison regime applied to those serving their life sentences. Also worthy of your attention would be a television report from the same facility shown on the NTV channel in the days of the recent hostage crisis in Moscow.

For the "Memorial" Human Rights Center
Chairman of the Board, "Memorial" HR Center     О.P. Orlov

For the Moscow Helsinki Group
For the International Helsinki Federation
The President of International Helsinki
Federation
Moscow Helsinki Group Chairperson     L.Alexeeva

Attachments:

1. Alternative report to the UN Committee against tortures (submitted by Russian human rights NGOs), year 2002.
2. Conclusions and Recommendations of the Committee against Torture UN. RUSSIAN FEDERATION, CAT/C/XXVIII/Concl.5, 16 May 2002
3. Amnesty International "The Russion Federation. Denial of justice" Index EI: EUR 46/027/2002
4. Extracts from the report of the Moscow Helsinki Group on the human rights situation in the Russian Federation for the year 2001.
5. The list of civilians, disappeared or killed in the Republic of Chechnya after being kept by the representatives of the federal forces prepared by the "Memorial" human rights center (the translation of the list of May 2002. The list is undoubtedly incomplete.)
6. Information on Turpal-Ali Atgeriev.
7. Information of Ruslan Alikhadzhiev.
8. The Article by D.Sokolov-Mitrich "Ku-Pose", published in "Izvestiya"' June 28, 2002.