by Nabi Abdullaev

MOSCOW, Russia--Living in Russia is often like being trapped inside a life-long absurdist play. Sometimes it is funny, but more often it is a bitter show. I have seen students pay their professors to not to teach them anything. I have seen schoolteachers' rally to demand the preservation of the existing education system that keeps them in misery. Last week I saw a man overflowing with joy and relief after he lost a case worth $200,000 in court.

When Russian federal airplanes bombed the house of Abdulla Khamzayev in Urus-Martan, in Chechnya, in October 1999, he didn't join the rebels fighting Russian forces in the restive republic. Instead, Khamzayev, a 64-year-old Chechen lawyer who calls himself a law-abiding Russian citizen, took the state to court. The bombing of Urus-Martan killed six civilians and wounded fifteen more, according to Khamzayev.

He filed a civil suit against the Russian Defense Ministry and federal government and demanded $56,000 in compensation for the leveled home and $150,000 in redress for his moral sufferings.

To prove his case Khamzayev had to get a statement from the Defense Ministry saying that his demolished home was neither a hide-out for Chechen rebels nor a storehouse for their firearms. The Russian General Staff also granted him a written acknowledgment that Chechen rebels have no aviation abilities at their disposal--that document was to avert allegations that rebels were the guilty party in the case, says Khamzayev.

He even received a document from the military that many in Russia and abroad had never heard of--or at least no reference to the document can be found in the press--saying that the bombing of Chechen settlements and of the area 3 kilometers in diameter around them are forbidden, as civilians living there would be at risk.

However, Moscow's municipal court, where Khamzayev brought his case to in April, refused to support his demand for compensation.

As it happens, Khamzayev is known Russia-wide in connection with the trial of Col. Yuri Budanov, who is accused of kidnapping and murdering an 18-year-old Chechen girl last year. Khamzayev is representing the girl's family in the trial.

Military prosecutor Col. Vladimir Ten, who represented the Defense Ministry--the main defendant in the case--told the court that investigators couldn't find a direct relation between the bombings conducted by federal troops and the destruction of Khamzayev's home. At the court hearings in May, the prosecutor even suggested--triggering peals of laughter from the spectators' gallery--that foreign bombers could have ruined the lawyer's house.

The Defense Ministry had a lot to lose. If the court granted compensation to Khamzayev, thousands of Chechen families made homeless during the ongoing military campaign could rush to follow Khamzayev's example.

Khamzayev filed an appeal in August, and on 4 October, the Moscow city court considered his appeal. "The worst thing the judges could do is to cancel the previous court verdict and send my case back for additional investigation," Khamzayev told me while waiting for the court's decision outside the courtroom. "It will cost me another year of my life."

But this time around, Khamzayev's appeal was rejected. The reason: Russian military prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the bombing and, according to Russian law, the civil case must be frozen until the investigation ends.

Asked how long will it take to prosecutors to come up with the results, Ten emitted several vaguely self-critical statements. "The investigation is stalled as we cannot identify the guilty party," he said sincerely.

Yet after the verdict, Khamzayev heartily thanked the judges. Why?

As his appeal was outright rejected, rather than sent back to a lower court, he won't have to play legal ping-pong through the Russian courts.

Instead, because his case has been rejected by two national courts, the door is open to Strasbourg and the European Court on Human Rights, where it's likely that he will finally force his country to take responsibility for what it does.

Nabi Abdullaev is a freelance writer based in Dagestan.

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