Moscow Lawsuit and The European Court Complaint
After the siege, 61 former hostages started seeking compensation for physical and emotional suffering totalling almost $60m from Moscow city authorities (according to Russia's then-new anti-terrorism law, the region where an act of terror occurs should pay compensation for moral and material damages). Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov's office denounced the suits, saying it could not be held responsible as "the Chechen issue and its consequences are not within the jurisdiction of the Moscow authorities in any way." The Moscow administration earlier agreed to pay 50,000 roubles ($1,570) in compensation to each former hostage and 100,000 roubles ($3,140) to relatives of those killed. In all but one of the cases, Moscow city courts rejected the compensation claims.
In July 2003, 80 plaintiffs from Russia, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan turned to the European Court for Human Rights, claiming that their right to life had been violated by Russia authorities' handling of the standoff. In April 2007, Igor Trunov, the claimants' advocate, reported that the ECHR had finally begun hearings into a complaint filed in 2003 by the victims against the Russian government. Trunov added that not only Russian citizens, but also those from Ukraine, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan, filed complaints in the Strasbourg Court. The plaintiffs demand €50,000 each in compensation for the violation of their human rights. The case was accepted by the court in December 2007.
On July 8, 2008, The Moscow Times reported that the hearings at the European Court of Human Rights will be closed to the public at the request of Russian authorities as, according to Igor Trunov, they "have promised full disclosure on how they handled the crisis", including "the makeup of the knockout gas used in the storming of the theater by commandos."
On December 20th, 2011, the European Court of Human Rights published its judgement in the case, ordering Russia to pay the 64 applicants a total of 1.3 million euros in compensation. The court also found that Russia had violated Article 2 of the European human rights convention when handling the hostage crisis, "with inadequate planning and conduct of the rescue operation", and with the "authorities’ failure to conduct an effective investigation into the rescue operation", although the Court found that there had been "no violation of Article 2 of the Convention on account of the decision by the authorities to resolve the hostage crisis by force and to use the gas."
Read more about this topic: Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis
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