Budanov was found guilty of kidnapping, rape, murder and abuse of power

MOSCOW, July 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) -  In a landmark human rights ruling, a Russian colonel was sentenced to 10 years in jail Friday, July 25, after being convicted of strangling a Chechen woman to death while serving in the restive republic in March 2000.

Yury Budanov, the highest ranking officer tried for crimes in Chechnya, was also stripped of his rank and decorations by a military court in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

The former tank commander has admitted to strangling 18-year-old Elsa Kungayeva in March 2000, but contends he was temporarily insane at the time and was convinced that she was a rebel sniper, Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Last December, a court in Rostov-on-Don accepted his defense and acquitted him.

But that verdict was overruled in February by Russia's supreme court, which ordered a retrial.

The judge in the new trial ruled Friday that Budanov was of sound mind at the time of the killing and found him guilty of kidnapping, murder and abuse of power.

The 40-year-old officer has already spent just over three years in pre-trial detention, which means Budanov has just under seven more years to serve in jail.

Budanov, locked up in a cage inside the courtroom, was silent as the sentence was read out. He heard the judge speak after removing the cotton wool that he had stuffed into his ears for the entire trial.

His wife and sister were present in the tribunal and, while keeping calm, were visibly upset after the verdict was read.

'Harsh, Unjustified'

The Budanov trial – which was condemned by human rights groups - was seen as a test of Russia's determination to prosecute alleged atrocities committed by its troops in the almost four-year conflict.

The young Chechen woman was abducted by Russian troops from her home village of Tangi-Chu, then taken to a nearby military base where she was sexually assaulted and strangled.

Budanov, who was reported to have been drinking on the night of the murder, barged into the Kungayev family's house with his soldiers at around midnight and took Elsa away in an armored personnel carrier, according to testimony from her father and neighbors.

Her body was discovered the next day and an initial forensic examination determined that she had been beaten, raped and sodomized.

The crime of rape is more dishonorable than murder in Chechen culture.

Budanov's attorney, Alexei Dulimov, immediately announced that he would appeal the ruling, denouncing it as "harsh and unjustified."

In Budanov's first trial, psychiatrists supported his claim of temporary insanity, and the court referred him for compulsory psychiatric treatment, the BBC News Online reported.

A new psychiatric report delivered to the court last month concluded that the tank commander was sane but in a "highly agitated state" at the time of the killing.

Human rights condemned Russian army's abuses against civilians during the military invasion of Chechnya.

In 2002, the same year Budanov's crime, Human Rights Watch said it had documented more than 120 summary executions of civilians and numerous cases of arbitrary detention, torture and rape by Russian forces in Chechnya.

Even official Russian institutions were miffed at the military's aggressions against Chechens, with the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, condemned round-up operations there in a unanimously-adopted resolution.

Human rights groups, international organizations and Western capitals have long accused Russian troops - armed with Kremlin approval - of carrying out widespread human rights abuses in Chechnya.