Five Chechens convicted in Austria for forcing girls to "live according to Sharia"

A court in Austria has sentenced five natives of Chechnya who persecuted women for what they thought was inappropriate behaviour.

The court has established that the convicts organized a group in social networks comprising several hundred members of the Chechen community. They persecuted Chechen women who did not follow "traditional norms of behaviour" and posted their photos as evidence of their "inappropriate appearance." At the same time, they tried to force the girls "to behave according to Sharia Law" by harassment, beatings and threats, the "Die Presse" writes.

The oldest of the convicts was sentenced to 15 months in jail, 10 of them – conditionally. Others received similar punishments.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that human rights defenders are aware of cases of "re-education" of the Chechen girls who have grown up in Europe, and whom their relatives call or bring by deceit to their homeland, where they are forced to marry.

The campaign of enforcing the "female morality" in Chechnya was launched back in 2006, when Ramzan Kadyrov stated that using mobile phones was negatively affecting women's "moral appearance."

In December 2008, Kadyrov announced that there is a custom in Chechnya to kill women suspected of having extramarital affairs, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote in its report.