#11
Moscow furious at threat of war crimes court for Chechnya
April 3, 2003
AFP

Moscow responded furiously Thursday to the Council of Europe's threat to set up a war crimes tribunal for Chechnya but rights defenders and commentators said the warning could force Russia to crack down on military abuses in the war-torn republic.

The Kremlin's top spokesman for Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, dismissed the proposed court as "judicially meaningless" and branded the pan-European human rights body's initiative as "politically harmful."

A top Russian prosecutor, meanwhile, accused the Council of trampling on Russia's sovereignty.

"This idea has no legal grounds and is a direct interference in the Russian judicial system," Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky told the Interfax news agency.

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) warned Wednesday that it would recommend setting up an international court to try war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the breakaway republic "if the current climate of impunity continues to prevail."

The Russian government has sparred for years with the Council about its human rights record in Chechnya, where federal troops are accused of carrying out extra-judicial killings, torture and rape during their three-and-a-half-year war against separatist rebels.

Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the pro-Russian administration in Chechnya, said late Wednesday the tribunal was "inappropriate" after voters overwhelmingly approved a new constitution last week that sets the repubic's place as a part of Russia.

But a top political expert, Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA-Canada Institute, told AFP the warning could finally end the climate of impunity for Russian troops serving in Chechnya.

"It's not important whether or not they finally set up a tribunal. The main thing is that in the West they will start to collect a dossier about our military, who was involved in what, in killings, looting, rapes," he said.

"There's not just one Budanov," he added, in reference to a Russian colonel on trial for murdering a young Chechen woman. "There are hundreds of them."

"The threat that somewhere this evidence will be documented will have a sobering effect on our military commanders. We have to live according to civilized rules of the West," Kremenyuk said.

Alexander Cherkasov from Russian human rights body Memorial conceded that the tribunal was unlikely to be set up, but could prove a catalyst for change nonetheless.

"It's practically impossible that this idea of a tribunal will become reality because there will be no consensus among the Council of Europe's foreign ministers" (who would have to endorse the concept), he said.

"But it's a decision of great importance. It's a serious instrument of pressure on Russia. For Russia, political pressure is essential to improve the human rights situation," Cherkesov added.

Russian newspapers agreed that the proposed war crimes tribunal in Chechnya was a slap in the face for Moscow.

The Council of Europe had determined that "Russia is unable to deal with human rights violations in Chechnya, and the federal forces actions' are accompanied by killings, torture, beatings and disappearances of people," the the Vremya Novostei daily said.

"The assembly decided that the international community should consider setting up a war crimes tribunal modelled on the international tribunal for former Yugoslavia," it said.

Russia had also bitterly opposed the establishment of the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, where former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic has been on trial since February last year accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

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