Elza Kungayeva. 18-year-old Chechen girl who was raped, strangled, tortured, and brutally murdered by Russian officer Budanov. The story is heartbreaking...
The date is March 27, 2000. That day is Russian presidential election day. At 12 at night, a military vehicle belonging to the Russian army arrived at Elza's family's house. 160th Regiment Commander Colonel Yuri Budanov entered the house. He was accompanied by four soldiers and Budanov's chief of staff, Colonel Fjodorov. They stayed inside for about seven minutes. First, they wanted to take Elza's little sister Hava. Then they wrapped Elza in a blanket, put her in the military vehicle they came with, and took her to the regiment headquarters. There they tortured, raped, and strangled Elza to death with a fishing line.
After Elza's murder, the Medical Criminal Identification Center Laboratory of the Russian Ministry of Defense performed an autopsy on Elza. The autopsy date was December 26, 2000. According to the autopsy results, it was reported that Elza was tortured for an hour before her death. The same unit of the same institution performed another autopsy at a later date. However, torture was not mentioned in this autopsy report. While a ring mark that could have resulted from rope strangulation was described and reported in the first autopsy, this issue was not mentioned again in the second autopsy.
Elza Kungayeva (also known as Kheda Kungayeva 1982 – 27 March 2000) was a Chechen 18-year-old woman abducted, beaten, allegedly raped, and murdered by Russian Army Colonel Yuri Budanov during the Second Chechen War. On March 27, 2000, Elza Kungayeva was forcibly taken from her home in Chechnya, abused and murdered. On February 28, 2001, the Rostov District Military Court began the trial of Col. Yuri Budanov for Kungayeva's murder. It was one of the first cases in which Russian authorities promptly and publicly acknowledged a war crime perpetrated by Russian federal forces against civilians in Chechnya.
During the trial, some Russians declared Budanov a hero. They even shouted "Freedom for the Russian officer!" in the courtroom. They were shouting and throwing flowers at his feet. Budanov was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, he was released on parole in January 2009.
Yusuf Temirhanov could not accept what happened to Elza and the developments in Budanov's trial after the murder. In order to save the honor of his people, he gave the Russian officer the punishment he deserved and killed Budanov in Moscow on June 10, 2011. Yusuf Temirhanov, who was arrested after his murder, was subjected to unimaginable torture in Russian dungeons during his detention and died at the age of 46 in a prison in the Omsk region of Russia on August 3, 2018.