The only Russian officer publicly tried for an atrocity in Chechnya has
been freed on the grounds that he was insane.
By Yury Tumanov in Rostov-on-Don and Asiyat Vazayeva in Nazran (CRS No.161,
09-Jan-03)
Early on the evening of December 31, as Russia's New Year's holiday was beginning,
the long-running saga of the murder trial of Russian tank commander Colonel
Yury Budanov ended with his acquittal on grounds of insanity.
The case was unique here, as it was the only one in which a serving Russian
officer in Chechnya was standing trial for an atrocity committed there -
the murder of a teenage Chechen girl. As such, it was seen as a test of how
a Russian military court treated one of its own officers, apprehended for
a serious crime.
Human rights activists have universally condemned the verdict, saying that
it now gives the green light to the Russian military to act with impunity
in the war-torn republic.
Budanov, commander of the 160th tank regiment in Chechnya, was charged with
the murder of the 18-year-old Kheda (also known as Elza) Kungayeva in March
2000. The girl was also raped, but no rape charge was brought against the
accused.
That Budanov killed Kungayeva is not disputed. On March 26, 2000, the day
in which Vladimir Putin was confirmed as president of Russia, Budanov and
a group of soldiers arrived in an armoured personnel carrier at the house
of the Kungayev family in the Chechen village of Tangi-Chu.
The parents of the house were not at home. Budanov and three other soldiers
seized their daughter Kheda and took her back with them to their base.
Later that evening, Budanov summoned his soldiers and ordered them to bury
the girl's dead body in woodland. He himself was in his underwear, while
her clothes had been slashed with a knife. A medical examination later determined
that the girl had been raped and strangled.
Budanov, supported by his chief of staff Ivan Fyodorov and several soldiers,
later tried to resist arrest by Russian general Valery Gerasimov. He was
detained and finally brought to trial in February 2001 in a military court
in the city of Rostov-on-Don.
The reason it took so long for Budanov to come to trial was that he underwent
several psychiatric examinations, as his defence team sought to prove that
he had committed the crime while mentally unstable.
An initial examination in a military hospital judged him to be basically
sane. Subsequent examinations, including three by the Serbsky Institute in
Moscow, determined him first to be "temporarily insane" and finally to have
been insane for a period of three months before he committed the murder.
For most of the trial, Budanov was completely calm and conversed in normally
with an IWPR correspondent through the bars of the cage where he was being
held.
Just before the end of the trial, a scandal erupted, however, when the lawyer
representing the Chechen girl Abdullah Khamzayev said that Budanov gave the
impression of being an entirely sane person, whose psychic health was not
in doubt. Budanov swore at Khamzayev and accused him of being responsible
for the death of Russian soldiers.
After this exchange, the judge declared an adjournment and the last week
of the trial took place without Budanov present.
The trial became politicised as the defence claimed that Budanov was a distinguished
soldier. They said that the Chechen village where the tragedy took place
was a dangerous place, where a large quantity of weapons had been confiscated,
a helicopter had been shot down and three tanks destroyed by Chechen rebels.
They claimed that Budanov had been shown a photograph showing Kungayeva with
a sniper's rifle in her hand.
"A Chechen girl can play with dolls by day and be a sniper, a sapper or a
radio-operator by night," the defence said.
Neighbours of the murder victim from Tangi-Chu responded that the Kungayevs
were a respected family of farmers and that Kheda was an extremely retiring
girl, who spent most of her time at home.
"She was very modest and shy girl, who was very embarrassed even to pass
a group of boys in the village or at school," her friend Taisa Suleimanova
testified. "She was the eldest of five children and had to many household
chores - like tending the cows and sheep - because her parents were away
all day working in the vegetable garden. It's simply impossible to imagine
a girl like this as a sniper."
Visa Kungayev, the father of the dead girl, said afterwards, "Throughout
the whole trial we felt that we were not the victims, but the accused."
He did not blame his lawyers but said, "The military, as represented by influential
generals (Vladimir) Shamanov and (Gennady) Troshev and others set themselves
the goal of getting Budanov out of jail at any price."
Lieutenant-general Vladimir Shamanov, a former senior commander in Chechnya
and now governor of Ulyanovsk region, publicly defended Budanov, calling
him a "talented commander" and an "honest citizen of our country." He had
been awarded the Order of Courage medal.
The mother of the murdered girl, Roza Bashaeva said the trial had completely
destroyed her health.
"We had to prove what was obvious, endure injustice and humiliation both
in the trial and outside it, because there are plenty of people in Russia
who believe that all Chechens are guilty in advance," she said." And yet
we have to achieve justice for the sake of the memory of our daughter."
The family complained that the trial had been weighted against them. Several
of their basic demands, including inviting General Gerasimov, who had arrested
Budanov, to testify, were not accepted.
The family is now appealing the verdict.
Many in Chechnya have been following the trial closely - and were not surprised
by the way it turned out.
"We expected this result," said Said-Magomed Gelagayev, a well-known teacher
from Grozny. "We guessed that a murderer in epaulettes would escape punishment."
"I remember one of his comments in the court room: 'I did what others are
doing in Chechnya.' That's the way it is, a huge number of similar crimes
have been committed in the years of the war and only Colonel Budanov ended
up in the dock."
Zura Magomadova, the headmistress of the school in the Soglasie camp, where
the Kungayevs now live, said that her faith in Russian justice had been destroyed,
"It's a shame that the trial did not live up to the hopes of people like
me. Now the lack of punishment unties the hands of the criminals."
Eliza Musayev of the human rights organisation Memorial commented, "A Russian
court is not free, the trial of Budanov showed us that."
Yury Tumanov, a freelance journalist in Rostov-on-Don, covered the Budanov
trial. Asiyat Vazayeva is a freelance journalist based in Ingushetia.