Relatives of victims in the 2005 Nalchik terrorist attack demand to know where the dead are buried

The relatives of those killed in the October 2005 special operation in the city of Nalchik are demanding that regional officials disclose the whereabouts of the cremated bodies of the deceased. The regional government has reportedly received 15 separate requests from the relatives of those killed in the terrorist siege.

“We have received no assurances that these people were killed in light of the attack. No one is saying that they are innocent, but all of us were automatically denied [both] receiving the bodies [of the deceased] and information,” said Rimma Nabitov, whose two sons were killed during the attack.

The relatives decided to submit a claim to authorities after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg in 2014 ruled that the rights of family members had been violated. According to an ECHR representative, the Russian state authorities did not take into account the “particular circumstances of each applicant.”

• On October 13, 2005, about 100 militants were killed in Nalchik. In June 2006, the bodies of the deceased were secretly cremated on orders from the the Russian Attorney General.
• It was reported that all those killed were directly involved in the militant attack. The concealment of the burial grounds has been justified by laws “on combating terrorism” and “on burials and funerals.”