Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 113
November 2008
Sabanchiyeva and Others v. Russia (dec.) - 38450/05
Judgment 6.6.2013 [Section I]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Inhuman treatment
Statutory ban on returning bodies of terrorists for burial: 
Appalling conditions of storage of the bodies of the applicants' deceased relatives: admissible: admissible

Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Respect for private life
Statutory ban on returning bodies of terrorists for burial: admissible

Early in the morning of 13 October 2005 the law-enforcement agencies of the town of Nalchik were attacked by armed insurgents. The fighting continued into the following day and left more than 100 dead, the majority from the ranks of the assailants. The applicants are relatives of some of the deceased insurgents. The applicants, who took part in their identification, alleged that the bodies were kept in appalling conditions (piled up, naked and decomposing for want of adequate refrigeration). Under legislation introduced in Russia following the terrorist attack on the Nord-Ost Theatre in Moscow in October 2002 the bodies of terrorists were not handed over to their relatives and the place of burial was not disclosed. In April 2006, having established the involvement of the insurgents in the attack, the investigating authority terminated criminal proceedings against them because of their deaths. In June 2006, pursuant to the decision not to return the bodies of the deceased to their families, 95 corpses of the presumed terrorists were cremated. Some of the applicants contested before the Constitutional Court the legislation governing the interment of terrorists. In June 2007 the Constitutional Court ruled that the measure in question was justified, noting, inter alia, that the burial of terrorists could serve as propaganda for terrorist ideas and also cause offence to relatives of the victims, creating the preconditions for heightened interethnic and religious tension.
Admissible under Articles 3, 8 and 9, taken alone and in conjunction with Articles 13 and 14 of the Convention.

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