Moscow views Strasbourg court's ruling on Ilasku case as politically motivated

Moscow has called Strasbourg court's ruling on Ilasku case as a mistake, and a clearly politically motivated one.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's statement in response to the result of so-called "Ilasku case," received by RIA Novosti on Thursday, reads that Russian diplomats are "surprised by the fact that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg showed itself as inconsistent, controversial, biased, and clearly politically motivated." The statement also reads, "the verdict is far from perfect from the legal point of view, to put it mildly."

In the early 1990s leader of Moldovan "informal nationalists" - in fact, insurgents - Ilya Ilasku was ill-famous all over the Soviet Union. Former local KGB officer, in the late 1980s he joined the nationalist Moldova People's Front and made a sweeping career into head of the front's Tiraspol department and a most famous member of the front's council in charge of "security issues." He was involved into a crusade against Gagauz (a Turkic-language ethnic group in Moldova) villages; he was the first to speak against the creation of the Moldovan Republic of Transdniestria; and he was the one to make the "blacklist" of Transdniestrian leaders.

In 1992 Ilasku and his three comrades from Bujor armed formation were arrested by the Transdniestrian Guard, tried for double murder, and sentenced to capital punishment later changed for imprisonment. In 2001 president of the unrecognized republic of Transdniestria Igor Smirnov pardoned him.

Ilasku left Transdniestria, but did not stay in Moldova. He went to Romania. Currently he lives there, is a Romanian citizen and a legislator in the Romanian senate. He was even elected to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

On Thursday the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia, acting against Ilasku, has violated Article 3 of the European Human Rights Convention in terms of ill-treatment and violation of standards of detention until the sentence was to be implemented; actions Ilasku was subject to during his detention until the sentence was to be implemented must be qualified as torture.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded that, in compliance with the Federal Law "On Ratification of the Convention of Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and of Protocols Thereto," the Russian Federation admits the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights as binding only in the event that alleged violations of the Convention and Protocols thereto took place after these legal acts had become effective for Russia. The relevant ratification instrument was handed to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on May 5, 1998.

Russian diplomats write that the Ilasku trial had taken place long before the convention became effective for Russia. The European Court of Human Rights has also admitted that in its ruling.

Moscow reminds that, in compliance with the Resolution of the UN General Assembly, dated December 12, 2001, no action taken by a state shall be regarded as a violation of an international legal commitment taken by the state, unless this commitment is binding upon this state at the moment when the action is being done.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also regrets that members of the Court deliberately manipulate most important legal terms to endorse the practice of "double standards."

"While the Court took the side of NATO when trying Yugoslavia's bombardment by member states of the North Atlantic Alliance, and disguised its ruling as endorsement of the principles of territorial jurisdiction, in the 'Ilasku trial' the same Court used in its own interests an opposite principle of exterritorial jurisdiction, in fact based on a false premise that Transdniestria is under jurisdiction of the Russian Federation," reads the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"Everyone but not the Court seems to be well aware that consistently downgrading presence of several hundred Russian troops that are busy guarding military depots remaining after the collapse of the Soviet Union and performing peacekeeping functions under a relevant agreement with Moldova cannot be used to 'control' a territory with a million inhabitants," the statement goes on.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also emphasized that names of Ilasku and his group's victims were known. "However, the [European] Court [of Human Rights] has refused not only to take in citizen of the Russian Federation Lyudmila Gusar, the widow of one of the killed, as a third party to the trial, but to allow her to bring her evidence as a witness. Neither has Gusar's complaint about negligence of Moldovan and Romanian authorities been considered," the Russian statement maintains.

"To [our] earnest regret, the members of the Court have even resorted to using illegally seized evidence," the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote in the statement. According to Moscow, "there is even more to it than 'double standards' - these actions are unworthy of any judicial body."