MOSCOW, October 17 (RAPSI) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that the rights of former mayor of Dagestan's capital Makhachkala, Said Amirov, who had received life sentence for terrorism, had been violated, the court’s ruling reads on Tuesday.

Amirov filed an appeal with the Court in November 2015. He claimed that medical assistance provided to him was inadequate in face of his condition, saying that his cell was not adapted to a wheelchair prisoner.

ECHR held that Russian authorities violated Article 3 (Prohibition of torture) of the European Convention of Human Rights on account of the poor quality of medical treatment in the remand prison and the inappropriate conditions of the applicant’s detention in the penal colony. At the same time the Court held that there was no violation of the Article 3 on account of the quality of medical care received by the applicant in the penal colony.

ECHR ordered Russia to pay Amirov €7,500 in damages and additional €500 in legal costs.

On March 24, 2016 the Supreme Court upheld life sentence for Amirov.

On August 27, 2015, the North Caucasus District Court sentenced Amirov to life in prison for terrorism. His nephew, Yusup Dzhaparov, who was a deputy mayor of Kaspiysk, was sentenced to 18 years in a high security prison and 18 months of supervised release. Six other men who had been also convicted in this case received long jail terms ranging from 10 to 22 years.

They were found guilty of organizing a 2011 terrorist attack in a shopping mall in the city of Kaspiysk and killing Arsen Gadzhibekov, the director of the Investigative Committee in one of the districts of Makhachkala.

Gadzhibekov at the time of his death worked on a number of high-profile criminal cases, including the 2010 twin bombings in Kizlyar, a town on the border with Chechnya, that left 10 killed and 270 injured. He was also investigating misconduct allegations against members of the Makhachkala city administration headed by Amirov, according to Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin.

Moreover, in July 2014, Amirov and Dzhaparov were sentenced to 10 and 8.5 years in prison, respectively, for plotting a murder attempt on Sagid Murtazaliyev, head of the Pension Fund in Dagestan and a prominent Russian wrestler, whose plane was supposed to be shot down by a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.