by MARIA KLIMOVA & YULIA SUGUEVA
ILLUSTRATION/(c) Maria Tolstova/MediaZona
When women in the North Caucasus are murdered by their families for “immoral behaviour”, justice is rarely done.
“You can’t say that Sultan Daurbekov ended his daughter’s life, that he killed her.” This is how Ilyas Timishev began his defence of his client. “What you have to say is that he took her away from life, so that she couldn’t bring shame to herself, her father and her entire family. That’s the correct description.” Timishev’s client, Sultan Daurbekov, a resident of Chechnya, was on trial for the murder of his daughter, Zarema. In April 2015, this “honour killing” case, held in Grozny’s Staropromyslov District Court, was drawing to a close, and the public prosecutor had already requested an eight year sentence in a high security prison colony.
According to witnesses, Zarema Daurbekova “led an immoral life”. Reflecting on whether Zarema’s father deserved to be punished for killing her, Timishev remarked that the man was being judged under laws which belonged in a different cultural tradition.
“Our lawmakers are, in general, members of the Russian-speaking population. They will find this father’s actions unacceptable. Why is this?’ asked the defending counsel before immediately answering his own question: “Because they don’t have any traditions.”
“A father who killed his child after enduring 20 years of humiliation from her, the amoral behaviour of a Muslim daughter, cannot, in principle, face responsibility for murder”
Indeed, as Timishev claimed, the Daurbekov case involved not only legal issues, but ethical and cultural ones as well, and these needed to be properly resolved, “taking into account the mindset and traditions of the Chechen people.” Despite the annoyance of the judge, who tried to return Timishev to the facts of the case, the defence counsel continued to describe in great detail Chechen traditions and the differences between Muslim and Christian “cultural codes”.
“On the one hand, we have the Criminal Code. On the other, traditions, good ones. The honour and dignity of women,” Timishev continued. “This is why I believe, Your Honour, that we need to find a fair balance between the interests of the state, the penal system, law enforcement and the interests of the defendant.” Timishev insisted that Daurbekov killed his daughter in a state of “intense spiritual conflict”, and so his actions couldn’t be classed as murder. “A father who killed his child after enduring 20 years of humiliation from her, the amoral behaviour of a Muslim daughter, cannot, in principle, face responsibility for murder.”
“I don’t remember where the rope came from”
On the evening of 24 November 2013, Zarema Daurbekova, a resident of Grozny, was returning home from work. She and her husband had recently divorced, she had found herself a job in a hairdressing salon and she and her 10 year old son were living with her parents. But that evening, Zarema decided to visit her sister, who lived nearby, and spend the night there. When she got off the bus, she phoned her mother to say that she was on her way from the bus stop, but she never arrived at her sister’s home and didn’t phone again. Her family called the police, thinking she might have been abducted.
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