In two unprecedented rulings, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia liable for the killing of civilians in Chechnya in 2000.

Below are extracts from an article written by Anton Troianovski and published by the Washington Post:

The European Court of Human Rights found Russia liable Thursday [26 July 2007] in the killing of more than 50 civilians in a Chechen village in 2000 and ordered the government to pay a total of about $200,000 to five relatives of those who died.

The court castigated the Russian authorities for failing to seriously investigate the "cold-blooded execution of more than 50 civilians" in the village of Novye Aldy. "In the Court's view, the astonishing ineffectiveness of the prosecuting authorities in this case could only be qualified as acquiescence in the events," said the unanimous decision by the seven-judge panel.

The ruling is part of a series of decisions by the court this year finding Russian servicemen liable for atrocities committed in Chechnya, where government troops have fought separatists on and off since 1994. About 200 complaints related to the conflict have been filed at the court.

"This decision is very important because it recognizes the violation of human rights in the course of a large-scale operation," said Oleg Orlov, director of the human rights branch of Memorial, a Moscow-based group that helped represent the families before the court. "Civilians were consciously, premeditatedly destroyed."

Philip Leach, director of the London-based European Human Rights Advocacy Center, which also helped represent the relatives of 11 of the victims, called the court's language on Russia's failure to investigate "unprecedented."

The operation at issue in the case, Musayev and Others v. Russia, took place Feb. 5, 2000, in the southern suburbs of Grozny, the Chechen capital. "Numerous houses were burnt down and civilians killed," the court's decision said.

The court found that Russian authorities did not begin their investigation into the killings until a month later and that it was fraught with "a series of serious and unexplained delays and failures to act." Despite evidence that included eyewitness accounts and recovered bullets and shell casings, Russian authorities achieved "no meaningful result whatsoever . . . in the task of identifying and prosecuting the individuals who had committed the crimes."

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose special police forces were alleged to have taken part in the killings, had no comment on Thursday's ruling.

Another decision handed down by the court Thursday [26 July 2007] found Russia liable in two other deaths stemming from the Chechen conflict and similarly faulted authorities for failing to carry out a thorough and effective investigation.

Rights activists said they expected Russia would pay the damages, which it is legally bound to do under the European Convention on Human Rights. They said Russia's failure to effectively investigate rights violations demonstrates a lack of faith in the treaty.

Russian politicians have criticized the court, based in Strasbourg, France, as anti-Russian and politicized. Yury Sharandin, a leading member of Russia's upper house of parliament, attempted to play down the rulings. "When a court, including the one in Strasbourg, makes a decision in favor of a citizen, it does not mean at all that the decision is made against his state" […].