European Rights Court Nixes Over 1,500 South Ossetian/Russian Complaints against Georgia
Georgia will be spending less time in the defendant’s seat in the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) after the Strasbourg-based court ejected 1,549 complaints from breakaway South Ossetia against Tbilisi.
The applications belonged to a group of more than 3,300 individual complaints by South Ossetians and Russian peacekeepers, who accuse Georgia of crimes committed during the 2008 war, the ECHR said in a January 10 press release. The court said that, despite repeated requests, the plaintiffs failed to produce information related to their claims. The court struck out five other applications from the same body of complaints.
Georgia took the decision as a victory in its ongoing political battle with Russia and its South Ossetian protégés to prove to the world who was the villain in the 2008 conflict. Russian and separatist officials were quick to accuse the court of bias. “If they did not trust the court, why did they address it in the first place?” scoffed Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze, Rustavi2 reported. Some apparent confusion among the lawyers might explain it. One of them, Vladimir Beykulov, said he does not speak English and is not familiar with the European Court's proceedings, reported Ekho Kavkaza, a regional service of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. Nevertheless, Beykulov told the radio that he had volunteered to take South Ossetian and Russian cases to Strasbourg. Another lawyer, Zinaida Milayeva, declined to explain to Ekho Kavkaza why she did not respond to the ECHR queries.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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