Nura Luluyeva

Nura Luluyeva (Chechen: Нура Лулуева) (1960-2000) was a Chechen nurse and kindergarten teacher who was kidnapped and murdered by a Russian servicemen in 2000.

Ms Luluyeva was taken from a market in Grozny, the Chechen capital, on June 3 2000 where she was selling strawberries. A group of masked Russian servicemen riding on an armoured personnel carrier abducted her in the course of what the Russian government claimed was a lawful "special operation." A sack was put over her head and she was never seen alive again.

Eight months later, in February 2001, her decomposed body was uncovered in a mass grave containing 51 bodies. The grave was less than a mile from the main Russian military base in Chechnya and an autopsy showed that Ms Luluyeva died from a blow to the head with a blunt object. Many of the bodies found there were bound and blindfolded.

On November 10 2006 the European Court of Human Rights found that Russia had violated the European Convention of Human Rights on five separate counts.

The Court announced that it "could not but conclude that Nura Luluyeva was apprehended and detained by state servicemen. There existed a body of evidence that attained the standard of proof 'beyond reasonable doubt', which made it possible to hold the state authorities responsible for Nura Luluyeva's death."