RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Zalina Elhoroeva (F)

On 22 December, Zalina Elhoroeva was taken away by armed camouflaged men wearing balaclavas in the North Caucasus, Russia, according to two witnesses. Her family has filed complaints with law enforcement agencies, but Zalina has not been seen since, and her whereabouts are unknown.
Zalina Elhoroeva (Yelkhoroeva), aged 30, was travelling by taxi from Valdikavkaz in North Ossetia to Nazran in Ingushetia in the North Caucasus, accompanied by her brother’s wife. According to her family who received information from Zalina Elhoroeva’s brother’s wife and the taxi driver, on the way through the village of Chermen the road was blocked by four vehicles (models UAZ and VAZ-2114) which are often used by law enforcement agencies.

Armed camouflaged men in balaclavas who spoke native Russian requested to see their papers, following which they took Zalina Elhoroeva into a silver-coloured VAZ-2114 and drove her away without any explanation. The driver was told to drive to “Chermenskii Krug” (a checkpoint on the administrative border between North Ossetia and Ingushetia, staffed by armed law enforcement officers) and wait for her. However, Zalina Elhoroeva did not appear.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Zalina Elhoroeva was travelling to Vladikavkaz to visit her brother, Timur Elhoroev, who had been transferred from a hospital to a pre-trial detention centre by a law enforcement agency earlier in December. He was in hospital following an incident on 18 November in Nazran when unknown men opened fire at a car in which he was travelling during which he was badly wounded and the driver killed. According to human rights centre Memorial, Timur Elhoroev’s father is unaware of what charges have been made against his son.

Amnesty International has received numerous reports from Ingushetia, Noth Ossetia and across the North Caucasus in Russia of people being detained by masked members of law enforcement agencies who refuse to introduce themselves and explain the reason for the person’s detention and where he/she is being taken to. In a number of cases, after a period of initial incommunicado detention the family later learns that their relative is under investigation and being held by police or other law enforcement agencies. In other cases, such persons’ whereabouts have never become known to the family.

Enforced disappearance is a crime under international law violating the right to recognition as a person before the law, the right to liberty and the security of the person, the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right to life.

The security situation in the North Caucasus is volatile, with violence affecting Ingushetia and North Ossetia. Armed groups have been launching sporadic attacks against law enforcement officials, but have also targeted civilians indiscriminately in suicide bombings. In September, a car bomb in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia-Alania, reportedly killed at least 17 people and left over 100 injured. There are also regularly reported allegations that law enforcement officials use unlawful methods to combat armed violence which often involve violation of human rights. Alleged cases of disappearances, unlawful detention, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and extrajudicial execution are regularly reported from across the North Caucasus.

PLEASE WRITE IMMEDIATELY in Russian or your own language:
* Urging the authorities to establish Zalina Elhoroeva’s whereabouts and ensure her safety;
* Expressing concern that she may have been subjected to enforced disappearance;
* Calling for a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into the circumstances of her possible enforced disappearance, including identifying and bringing to justice those responsible for it.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS TO: (Time difference = GMT + 4 hrs / BST + 3 hrs)

Minister of Interior
Lt-Gen A. F. Akhmetkhanov
Ministry of Interior of North Ossetia
Pushkinskaya street 10V
Vladikavkaz 362004
RSO-Alania, Russian Federation
Fax: +7 8672 53 45 54
Email: mvdosetia@rambler.ru
Salutation: Dear Mr Minister

Prosecutor of North Ossetia
Mr Vladimir Pavlovich Vekshin
Prosecutor’s Office of RSO-Alania
Pushkinskaya street 8
Vladikavkaz 362004
Republic of North Ossetia – Alania
Russian Federation
Fax: +7 8672 53 23 72
Email: info@procuror-osetia.ru
Salutation: Dear Mr Prosecutor

Head of UFSB RF for RSO-Alania
Maj-Gen Oleg Yatskov
Directorate of the Federal Security Service for North Ossetia
Mordovtseva street 6
Vladikavkaz 362040
RSO-Alania, Russian Federation
Fax: +7 8672 53 41 76
Salutation: Dear Maj-Gen Yatskov

For all numbers above, if a person answers, say clearly “FAX”.

PLEASE SEND COPIES OF YOUR APPEAL TO:
Mr. Alexander V. Sternik.
Embassy of the Russian Federation
13 Kensington Palace Gardens
London W8 4QX
Fax: 020 7727 8625
Email: office@rusemblon.org

PLEASE CHECK WITH THE UK SECTION IF SENDING APPEALS AFTER 04 FEBRUARY 2011.

Individuals At Risk Programme
* including Urgent Actions

Tel: 020 7033 1572
Fax: 020 7033 1503
Email: iar@amnesty.org.uk
Web: www.amnesty.org.uk/cases

Amnesty International UK
Human Rights Action Centre
17-25 New Inn Yard
London
EC2A 3EA

PUBLIC AI Index: AMR 51/039/2008

09 May 2008

UA 123 /08

Death penalty / Legal concern

USA (Virginia)

Percy Levar Walton (m), black, aged 29

PUBLIC AI Index: AMR 51/039/2008
09 May 2008
UA 123 /08

Death penalty / Legal concern

USA (Virginia)

Percy Levar Walton (m), black, aged 29

Levar Walton, who suffers from serious mental illness, is scheduled to be executed in Virginia on 10 June. He was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murders of an elderly white couple, Elizabeth and Jesse Hendrick, aged 81 and 80, and a 33-year-old black man, Archie Moore, in the town of Danville in November 1996.

In 1999, three mental health experts concluded that Levar Walton suffers from severe schizophrenia and was probably suffering from this mental illness at the time of the crime. Walton, who was 18 years and one month old at the time of the murders, had displayed signs of emerging mental illness since the age of 16. He manifested bizarre beliefs and inappropriate behaviour after his arrest, in pre-trial custody, and during the trial. In telephone calls from the jail to his family, he insisted that his mother was his sister, and referred to his father as his brother, his grandfather as his father and his grandmother as his mother. He said that he had discovered that he had two brothers, when he had none. He told his mother that he was the Queen Bee, and his grandmother that he was Superman. He told relatives that he was Jesus Christ, and that he was a millionaire. He insisted that he would come back to life as soon as he was executed, and that he would retrieve and bring back alive his grandfather who had recently died. In a 1999 affidavit, his lawyer recalled how Levar Walton “did not meaningfully assist us in preparing a defence… Often times it was extremely difficult to communicate with Mr Walton, and there were occasions where we could not tell whether he understood what we were saying to him. Other times it was clear from Mr Walton’s questions and responses to my questions that Mr Walton understood little of what I was telling him”. The lawyer recalled that “we were unable to convince Mr Walton that he would not come back to life” if he was executed.

The defence asked for a mental health expert, and the trial judge appointed a psychologist. After a series of meetings with Levar Walton, the psychologist developed serious doubts about his competence to stand trial, finding that Walton’s articulation of his thoughts was incomprehensible. He was particularly troubled by Levar Walton’s notion that execution did not result in permanent death. The psychologist recommended that Walton be placed in a secure psychiatric hospital. This was rejected by the trial judge.

At first Levar Walton said that he wanted to plead guilty. Then in September 1997 he told his lawyer that he wanted to plead not guilty and have a jury trial because he was innocent. Days later, he reverted to admitting guilt. At end of that month, asked whether he would plead guilty or not guilty, he refused to speak, but responded by writing the word “chair” on a piece of paper. He told his lawyer that he wanted to be executed in order “to come back to life so he could be with his honeys”. In court in October 1997, he pleaded guilty to the murders, the judge accepted the plea and, after a sentencing phase at which no mental health evidence was presented, sentenced him to death. At the sentencing trial, Walton’s conduct was extremely prejudicial. He repeatedly burst out laughing and smiled inappropriately. The prosecutor argued that Walton’s outbursts indicated a “sadistic, ruthless, cold-blooded murderer who has no conscience, no remorse and no right to live in a civilized society”.

Levar Walton’s mental illness has worsened on death row – prison records have described an inmate who is “floridly psychotic”. In a March 2006 ruling on his case, six judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit noted the “substantial evidence that Percy Levar Walton does not understand that his execution will mean his death, defined as the end of his physical life”. They further noted that “there is no dispute that since his sentencing, Walton has fallen deeper and deeper into mental illness”. According to Levar Walton’s current lawyer, who has visited him regularly, Walton is unable to care for himself, such as in matters of basic personal hygiene. She has no doubt that he is severely mentally impaired.

There is evidence that in addition to his mental illness, Levar Walton functions, at best, at borderline mental retardation level and has the mental age of a young child. If the crimes for which he was sentenced to death had been committed five weeks earlier, Levar Walton would have been 17 years old and his execution would be illegal under US and international law. By all accounts, Levar Walton is less developed intellectually than most 18-year-olds.

In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court prohibited the death penalty for people with mental retardation, finding that “standards of decency” had evolved in the USA to the extent that such use of the death penalty now violated the Constitution. The Court further reasoned that the impairments of defendants with mental retardation diminish their personal culpability and their ability to understand consequences, rendering the death penalty unjustifiable on grounds of retribution or deterrence. Amnesty International believes that there is a profound inconsistency in exempting people with mental retardation from the death penalty while those with serious mental illness remain exposed to it. The same rationale of diminished culpability, greater vulnerability and limited capacity applies to defendants afflicted with severe mental illness. For further information, see USA: The execution of mentally ill offenders, January 2006, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/003/2006/en (including information on Levar Walton’s case).

Virginia accounts for 98 of the 1,100 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed in 1977. In 1999, Virginia’s then Governor, James Gilmore, commuted the death sentence of Calvin Swann on grounds of his schizophrenia from which he had suffered since his late teens. Swann was tried in front of the same judge, by the same prosecutor, and with the same defence lawyer, as Percy Levar Walton.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally. There is no such thing as a humane, fair, reliable or useful death penalty system (see ‘The pointless and needless extinction of life’: USA should now look beyond lethal injection issue to wider death penalty questions,

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/031/2008/en).

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in English or your own language, in your own words:
- expressing sympathy for the relatives of Elizabeth and Jesse Hendrick and of Archie Moore, and explaining that you are not seeking to minimize the suffering their deaths will have caused;
- opposing the execution of Percy Levar Walton, noting compelling evidence that he had begun suffering from serious mental illness more than a year before the crime, that his illness has deepened on death row, and also that he functions, at best, at the level of borderline mental retardation and has the mental age of a child;
- noting that six judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said in 2006 that “there is no dispute that since his sentencing, Walton has fallen deeper and deeper into mental illness”, and that this deterioration has reportedly continued;
- recalling Governor James Gilmore’s 1999 decision to commute the death sentence of Calvin Swann because of the prisoner’s schizophrenia, and calling for clemency for Percy Levar Walton.

APPEALS TO
(Time difference = GMT – 5 hrs / BST – 6 hrs):
Governor Tim Kaine
Office of the Governor,Patrick Henry Building
3rd Floor,1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219, USA
Fax: 001 804 371 6351
Email via website: http://www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm
[Salutation: Dear Governor]

PLEASE SEND COPIES OF YOUR APPEALS TO: His Excellency Mr Robert Holmes Tuttle, Embassy of the United States, 24 Grosvenor Square, W1A 1AE. PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY