ROSTOV-ON-DON (Russia), July 25: A court jailed a Russian army colonel for 10 years on Friday for the murder of a young Chechen woman in a high-profile case seen as a test of Moscow’s commitment to punishing abuses in Chechnya.

The verdict, ending a long-running case, was delivered as the Kremlin campaigns to persuade Chechens to support a peace plan for their separatist-minded republic.

But the lawyer for the family of Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old girl abducted and strangled by Yuri Budanov during an interrogation more than three years ago, said the sentence passed by the court in Rostov-on-Don was too lenient.

“When Chechens go on trial for similar crimes — murders, abductions — this same court metes out immeasurably more severe sentences,” Abdul Khamzayev told Reuters by telephone.

Neither he, nor the girl’s family — now living in a refugee camp near Chechnya — were present to witness the latest twist in a trial that has dragged on and off for nearly three years in Rostov-on-Don, site of a major military base in southern Russia.

The Kremlin, trying to woo Chechens with a peace plan underpinned by an October election for a Chechen president, welcomed the outcome of the trial.

“The verdict is of great importance for Chechnya, as people there were most impatient to learn the outcome and did not believe that the court could punish a senior officer,” Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a top Kremlin aide, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

Budanov, the only senior officer to go on trial for crimes against civilians after Russian forces returned to breakaway Chechnya in 1999, remained silent during the hearing and refused to make a final statement.

He was equally impassive as he heard the judge sentence him to 10 years in a strict-regime labour camp, reduce him to the ranks and strip him of the Order of Courage he was awarded for fighting in the rebel region.

The prosecution had demanded a sentence of 12 years while Kungayaeva’s family sought imprisonment for life.

Budanov’s lawyer, Alexei Dulimov, vowed to appeal. “This sentence is too harsh,” he said. “It has no legal ground.”

Budanov was arrested in March 2000, on the eve of a visit to Chechnya by UN human rights chief Mary Robinson, a move seen as an attempt by Moscow to demonstrate a tough line on any lawless troops and deflect criticism of rights abuses.

Budanov’s commanders in Moscow called him “scum” who should be “rooted out of the army ranks”. —Reuters