MOSCOW, October 30 - RAPSI. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has initiated proceedings in a challenge launched by Oleg Orlov, head of renowned human rights organization Memorial, and three REN TV channel journalists against law enforcement officers who allegedly kidnapped them in 2007, according to a report posted on the court's website.

According to the report, Rakhim Amriyev, 6, died during a special operation targeting armed militants in Ingushetia's Nazran in November 2007. The TV channel's crew arrived to cover protests against the task force's actions.

Orlov was on a business trip to the city at the same time. The applicants stopped at the Assa Hotel, where they were kidnapped by armed men wearing masks and camouflage. The men first searched their items and then proceeded to beat them. One of the armed individuals said that he was from the Russian Interior Ministry.

The applicants were then kidnapped. Wearing non-transparent polyethylene packages on their heads, they were taken outside the city. There they were told they would be killed if they returned to Ingushetia.

When the victims arrived back at the hotel, they found that all their personal items, including their clothes, money, credit cards and equipment had been taken from their rooms.

Ingushetia's investigative authorities later initiated criminal cases on illegal trespassing, hindering a journalist's activity and armed robbery.

Orlov submitted an application to re-classify the case as abuse of power by officials, but it was dismissed as there was no firm evidence proving the task force had been involved in the crime. In May 2008, consideration of the case was suspended as no suspects had been established. Ingushetia's courts dismissed the lawsuits seeking full access to the case materials.

In their application to the ECHR, Orlov and the journalists referred to violations of the articles on the prohibition of torture, the right to freedom, and the right to an efficient legal remedy of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as the violation of an article on the protection of property in a protocol to the convention.