Communicated on 6 September 2018

THIRD SECTION

Application no. 63329/14
Marusa ABUYEVA
against Russia
lodged on 5 September 2014

STATEMENT OF FACTS

The applicant, Ms Marusa Abuyeva, is a Russian national who was born in 1948 and lives in Katyr-Yurt. She is represented before the Court by Mr Kirill Koroteyev, a lawyer practising in Moscow.

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

A. The circumstances of the case and the relevant developments

1. Background information concerning the facts

The applicant lives in the Chechen village of Katyr-Yurt (also spelt as Katar-Yurt), which was bombed by the Russian military forces in February 2000. As a result, the applicant’s son, Mr Ruslan Abuyev, and dozens of other local residents died and/or suffered bodily injuries.

The factual circumstances concerning the airstrike and the ensuing investigation were established by the Court in its judgments Isayeva v. Russia, no. 57950/00, 24 February 2005, Abuyeva and Others v. Russia, no. 27065/05, 2 December 2010 and Abakarova v. Russia, no. 16664/07, 15 October 2015.

2. Information concerning the domestic investigation into the bombing

In February 2005 the Court examined the bombing of Katyr-Yurt in its first judgment on the matter, Isayeva, cited above, in which it found violations of Article 2 on the account of the State’s failure to protect the right to life and to conduct an effective investigation into the circumstances of the military operation.

In July 2005 the applicant, along with a number of other residents of Katyr-Yurt, lodged their application with the Court complaining of the same aerial attack of February 2000 and the authorities’ failure to investigate it properly.

In December 2010 the Court delivered its judgment in Abuyeva and Others, cited above, finding that, as in Isayeva, that the planning and execution of the airstrike had been carried out in violation of Article 2 of the Convention and that all the major flaws of the investigation into the military operation indicated in Isayeva had persisted throughout the second round of criminal investigations into the matter, which ended in 2007.

In October 2015 the Court further examined the same situation in the judgment it delivered in the case of Abakarova, cited above, where the applicant complained of the same airstrike and of the continuing failure of the authorities to investigate the matter effectively. As regards the investi