Russia is still in the lead by number of ECtHR complaints

The Russian Federation continues keeping the first place by the number of new complaints lodged to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR): in 2009 every third complaint lodged there arrived from Russia.

As to the reasons why Russian citizens go to the ECtHR, most complaints deal with mass non-enforcement of judgements on civil cases.

As stated by Anatoly Kovler, Judge of the ECtHR from Russia, reaction of national authorities on these cases is present, but it is late."

He also reported that Russia is often blamed of cancelling enforced judgements by way of supervision. "Russia sees changes in criminal proceedings; the arbitration procedure goes well... But the civil one... not so well," said the judge.

Also, rather many claims are filed against Russia on the problem of mass application of imprisonment and freedom restriction measure, as a result - SIZOs (pre-trial detention facilities) are overcrowded, the "Gazeta.Ru" reports.

Besides, complaints are met on property and civil rights. Arrests of persons extradited from Russia also became more frequent, as "Izvestia" writes.

A small fraction of complaints - no more than 1-2 percent are the so-called "Chechen complaints". However, as Mr Kovler has noted, violations on them are very serious, since they refer to the fundamental articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).