Russian Court Jails Four For Chechnya Killings

A Russian court on Thursday handed out long jail terms to four army servicemen for killing civilians in Chechnya.

A Russian court on Thursday handed out long jail terms to four army servicemen for killing civilians in Chechnya in a moved hailed by a human rights watchdog as a significant victory for justice.

A military court in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia found Captain Eduard Ulman and three subordinates guilty of the 2002 killing of six civilians including a woman and a teenager, Russian media reported.

Ulman and another two servicemen failed to show up in court but were sentenced in absentia for 14, 12 and 11 years respectively. Police are searching for the three. The fourth serviceman, present in court, was jailed for nine years.

Contacted by Reuters, court officials declined to comment.

Ulman's group, which opened fire on a civilian vehicle in January 2002 and killed the survivors, had been repeatedly retried and acquitted, prompting outrage from Chechens and human rights groups.

Rights activists had called the case a litmus test for the authorities' will to recognise atrocities committed by federal troops during a war where both sides often targeted civilians.

"It's a victory for justice that the group was sentenced finally," Allison Gill, head of the Russian office of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Reuters.

"We can only hope that this is the first in a long series of trials that will hold (those guilty) to accountability and justice for crimes committed in Chechnya," she said.

Russian troops poured into Chechnya in 1999 to overthrow a separatist government. Thousands of people have been killed in a long battle for control of the region which Moscow says it has now pacified. Armed groups, however, continue to operate.

FOLLOWING ORDERS

Chechnya's pro-Kremlin President Ramzan Kadyrov said the court had made a "just decision".

"All must be equal before the law, irrespective of personalities, ranks or merits," Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.

But many in Russia see Ulman and his subordinates as soldiers who only fulfilled their duty, including an order to kill the six Chechens which, they had said, was given by a higher ranking officer by radio.

In an earlier case, Colonel Yuri Budanov, seen by many as a hero of the Chechen conflict, was convicted for crimes against civilians. Victims' relatives said the sentences were too mild but they would not appeal the court's ruling because "justice prevailed, as well as the principle of the inevitability of punishment", agencies quoted their lawyer Lyudmila Tikhomirova as saying.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Ulman's group to between 18 and 23 years.

Defence lawyers said they were unaware of the whereabouts of Ulman and other two servicemen. They said they would appeal against the sentences