GROZNY, July 12 (Itar-Tass) - Chechnya’s President Ramzan Kadyrov believes it is inadmissible to amend a law that forbids the handing out of terrorists’ bodies to their relatives,
He revealed his viewpoint on the issue as he spoke to reporters in Grozny.
“I have strong objections against changing the law that bans the handing out of terrorists’ bodies to their relatives,” Kadyrov said. “The thugs who don’t hold anything dear, who drain the blood of the elderly, children and women don’t deserve courtesies.”
“A terrorist overtly acts against the people, intimidates and kills the innocents, spells the blood of hundreds of individuals, and threatens the very existence of the state,” he said.
“And imagine now that we should allow someone to bury those murderers like ordinary citizens, to look after their graves, and maybe even to bring flowers there,” said Ramzan Kadyrov, whose father Ahmat, a respected Islamic spiritual leader and Chechnya’s President, died in a terrorist act. “Wouldn’t it be simply absurd?”
Terrorist acts in Chechnya have claimed the lives of 1,450 law enforcement officers who defended Russia’s territorial integrity, as well as about 80 imams and local mayors, he recalled.
“I sum up the efforts to revise the effective legislation as a challenge to all those who fell at the thugs’ hands, who defended their homeland and didn’t spare their lives for the noble cause,” Kadyrov said.
Russian laws stipulate that the bodies of militants are not handed out to their relatives but are buried in the territories where the militants were eliminated. Although the members of terrorists’ families have filed lawsuits with the Russian courts of various instances, the court rulings have invariably confirmed the legitimacy of withholding the terrorists’ bodies.
In the meantime, the European Court for Human Rights has recognized the practice of retention of the militants’ bodies to be immoral and contravening the European Convention on Human Rights.
Thursday, the President of Russia’s Council for Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov said the Russian experts on human rights do not think that the impossibility to bury relatives in a dignified manner “is helpful in curbing terrorism”.
He said members of the Council plan to take up the problem at a meeting with President Putin and to recommend the relevant changes in legislations.
Apart from Russia, a ban on handing out the bodies of terrorists to their relatives exists in the U.S., Israel and the Netherlands.