- Date
- 29/10/1999
- First
- Shamil
- Surname
- GIGAYEV
- Sex/Age
- M
- Incident
- crossfire
- Motive
- J
- Place
- road
- Job
- cameraman
- Medium
- TV
- Federal District Plus
- Chechnya
- Street, Town, Region
- Shami Yurt, Chechnya
- Freelance
- no
- Local/National
- local
- Other Ties
- Cause of Death
- crossfire
- Legal Qualification
- no information
- Impunity
- trial, Strasbourg ruling 2005
[Entry revised, January 2010]
Shamil Gigayev, a cameraman with the Grozny TV company Nokhcho, died on 29 October 1999 in Chechnya when the convoy of vehicles in which he was travelling from Grozny to Nazran was attacked by a Russian fighter plane.
The aircraft appeared over the convoy in the morning when it was near the village of Shami-Yurt. The pilot shelled the vehicles several times. Fellow journalist Ramzan Mezhidov died as a consequence of the same attack. The total death toll was forty.
The attack was the cause of a protest to the Russian government by the International Red Cross, several vehicles of which were travelling with the same convoy.
Russian investigation closed.
ISAYEVA, YUSUPOVA and BAZAYEVA v. RUSSIA
European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg,
Judgment, 24 February 2005
(Applications nos. 57947/00, 57948/00 and 57949/00)
64. The investigation attempted to identify and question other victims of the attack or their relatives and to collect medical records and death certificates. Requests were sent to the local departments of the interior in Chechnya, to the district prosecutors' offices and to the five largest refugee camps in Ingushetia.
65. On several occasions in 2000 and 2001 six workers from the Chechen Committee of the Red Cross were questioned about the circumstances of the attack. They gave detailed explanations, accompanied by drawings of the site. Relatives of the two deceased Red Cross drivers were questioned. They testified about the deaths and identified the graves. An order for exhumation and a forensic report was issued, but the relatives objected and the order was not carried out. The father of one driver was granted victim status in the proceedings in July 2001.
66. In addition to the relatives of the first and the second applicants, Ms Burdynyuk and Red Cross staff, the investigators identified other victims. Two correspondents of local TV stations, Ramzan Mezhidov and Shamil Gegayev [sic], were killed during the attack. The investigators questioned Mezhidov's mother and widow, who objected to his exhumation. They submitted his death certificate and medical documents about his wounds. It does not appear that Gegayev's relatives were questioned.