Yuri Budanov

Yuri Budanov
Allegiance	Russia
Service/branch	Armoured warfare of Russia
Years of service	1987-2000
Rank	Colonel (1999-2003), private (2003-)
Awards	Order of Courage (stripped)

Former Colonel Yuri Dmitrievich Budanov (Russian: Юрий Дмитриевич Буданов; born 24 November 1963) is the Russian military officer convicted by a Russian court of war crimes in Chechnya.

Budanov is highly controversial in Russia: despite the conviction, Budanov enjoys widespread support of Russian households, as polled by public opinion. At the same time, he is broadly hated in Chechnya, even by the pro-Russian Chechens. In December 2008, a court in the south Russian Ulyanovsk Oblast granted a petition for early release. After eight years in prison (of nine years he was sentenced), he was released on parole on 15 January 2009.

Biography

He was born in 1963 in Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.

At the fall of the Soviet Union, Budanov was serving in Belarus, but he refused Belarusian citizenship and was transferred to the Siberian Military District, and then to Chechnya. According to the father of Budanov's victim, Budanov's tank regiment had been encamped just outside Tangi-Chu since February 2000, and Budanov himself had a notorious reputation among villagers. About ten days before the murder, Budanov reportedly arbitrarily searched and looted several homes in Tangi Chu, and two days before the incident he reportedly looted and threatened to torch several other homes.

From 2001 to 2003, Russian courts tried Colonel Yuri Budanov on the charges of March 27, 2000, kidnapping, rape (an allegation later withdrawn by the prosecution) and brutal murder of Elza Kungaeva, an 18-year-old Chechen girl whom Budanov claimed was accused of aiding a group of Chechen rebels who were attacking his unit. He admitted killing her in a fit of rage, but denied the rape charges.

Prosecution

Arrest

Budanov was arrested on March 29, 2000. According to press reports, Budanov claimed that Kungaeva was a suspected sniper, and that he had gone into a rage while questioning her.

Colonel-General Anatoly Kvashnin, then chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, appeared on national television to announce to President Vladimir Putin and the nation the arrest of Budanov in the grisly case. Kvashnin accused Budanov of "humiliating" and murdering Kungayeva, and denounced the colonel's behavior as "barbarous" and "disgraceful."

In a stark contrast, Lieutenant-General Vladimir Shamanov, who was Budanov's commanding officer, exhibited strong sympathy towards him. He said that Budanov was one of his best commanders and offered this challenge: "To [Budanov's] enemies I say: Don't put your paws on the image of a Russian soldier and officer."[1]

The Chechen rebels offered to exchange nine recent OMON special police captives for Budanov. After the Russian side refused the offer, the prisoners were executed on the morning of April 4, 2000. [2]

Charges

In relation to the case of Kungayeva, Budanov was charged with three crimes: kidnapping resulting in death, abuse of office accompanied by violence with serious consequences, and murder of an abductee. No charges have been brought expressly for the beating and torture Kungaeva endured prior to her death. He was also charged in the beating up a subordinate officer, threatening superior officers with a weapon, and other crimes.

Budanov claimed that he detained Kungaeva on suspicion of being a sniper, and that he killed her during interrogation. The investigation, however, reportedly found that no member of the Kungaev family had in any way been suspected of involvement in the anti-Russian activity.

Budanov used his official position and a military vehicle to remove Kungaeva from her home, and detained Kungaeva at a military installation; he was thus charged with exceeding his official position with violence resulting in serious consequences, which is punishable by three to ten years of imprisonment (article 286.3 of the criminal code).

Lack of a rape prosecution

The forensic physician, a Captain in the Russian military medical service, found three tears in her hymen and one in the mucous membrane of her rectum, and the report concludes that she was penetrated anally and vaginally by a blunt object after death.

Three of Budanov's subordinates, Sergeants Li-En-Shou and Grigoriev and a Private Yegorev, were found to be responsible for this. Charges against all three were simultaneously brought and dropped under the May 26, 2000 amnesty law.

Trial

The trial began on April 9, 2003, in Rostov-on-Don. Legal proceedings against Budanov, who underwent several retrials, lasted a total of 2 years and 3 months.[3]

Witnesses included Yahyayev, the person in the town administration, who according to Budanov had given him the picture representing Chechen snipers. However, Yahyayev said he had given no such picture to Budanov. General Shamanov came to defend Budanov during trial. He expressed his solidarity with the defendant, as did Colonel-General Gennady Troshev and numerous other Russian soldiers and civilians who picketed the court. According to a poll, 50% of the Russians asked supported the demands of picketers to release Colonel Budanov from custody; 19% did not support these demands.[4]

In a controversial decision, Budanov was initially found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity on December 31, 2002, and committed to a psychiatric hospital for further evaluation and the length of the treatment would have been decided by his doctor.

However, in the beginning of March 2003 the supreme court invalidated the sentence and ordered a new trial. This took place in the same place but with a new judge. The sentence of 10 years of imprisonment was given on July 25, 2003.

The judge who convicted Budanov, Vladimir Bukreyev, himself was convicted of bribe-taking and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment on July 6, 2009.

In prison

On September 21, 2004, Shamanov, now the Ulyanovsk regional governor, signed a pardon for Yury Budanov; Interfax quoted the head of the Ulyanovsk pardons commission, Anatoly Zherebtsov, as saying that if Putin backed the recommendation, Budanov would also get back his military rank and awards.

The commission's decision sparked outrage in Chechnya. "Whether in jail or freed, Budanov will remain a person who has committed a grave crime, which took the life of an innocent girl," Taus Dzhabrailov, the head of Chechnya's pro-Moscow parliament, told Interfax. Powerful pro-Moscow Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov said: "The Ulyanovsk commission's decision is like spitting on the soul of the long-suffering Chechen people." Kadyrov has also made statements that "If any of Elza's friends should meet [Budanov] I don't want to predict how they will act. The Chechen people do not consider him to be a human being, and as a war criminal, he does not deserve to be. One might be able to forgive his crime to some extent if he had killed a man. But to sexually assault a girl cannot be forgiven. He is beneath contempt. He has brought shame on the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation."

In February 2006 a Russian prison official announced that Budanov, who is serving his 10-year sentence, might be released early on good behaviour. The Chechen regional branch of the United Russia party addressed the State Duma and the Russian President with a request not to grant amnesty to Yuri Budanov.[5] The same month, on the petition of Budanov's advocate, with account of good behaviour of the inmate, the former colonel was removed from the strict custody colony to a settlement-colony.

In August 2007 a parole request from Budanov was rejected by the court in Dimitrovgrad.

In December 2008, a court granted him an early release and he was released on 15 January 2009, 15 months early. The decision has been protested by Chechnya's human rights ombudsman, Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, who has accused Russian judges of "double standards" with regard to Russians and Chechens.

The lawyer for the Kungayeva family, Stanislav Markelov, who had attempted a last-minute appeal against the release of Budanov was shot dead in Moscow on January 19, 2009 along with Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old journalist for Novaya Gazeta. However, the investigation of Markelov's murder showd in November 2009 that the murder was unrelated to this case, but committed by neo-nazis, the motif was the avenge for Markelov's support of anti-fascist activists as a lawyer.

See also

• Alexander Ivanovich Baranov
• Second Chechen War crimes and terrorism

External links

• Insane 'Heroes' of Our Time The Moscow Times
• Crime without punishment: Russian policy in Chechnya OpenDemocracy
• Final verdict

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