Russia has paid out €30,000 ($35,000) in compensation to Georgian woman Lia Shioshvili, who was deported from Russia in in 2006. This is the first time Russia has complied with a European Court of Human Rights ruling related to the 2006 mass deportation of ethnic Georgians from Russia.

Thousands of ethnic Georgians were expelled from Russia in 2006 after the arrest of four Russian intelligence officers in Georgia accused of spying.

The ECHR’s 20 December ruling states that on 20 October 2006, Russian police arrested Shioshvili with her children in Ruza, a town in Moscow Oblast, where they confiscated $400 from her claiming she had not declared the money.

Shioshvili was then forced to travel with her four children and all their belongings all while in the final month of pregnancy. She made it to the Daghestani–Azerbaijani border only in the beginning of December and miscarried on 15 December in a hospital in Gurjaani, eastern Georgia.

Georgian rights group the 42nd Article of the Constitution represented Shioshvili at the ECHR.

Dimitri Khachidze, from the 42nd Article, told OC Media that the compensation was unprecedented, as Russia has never previously fulfilled the rulings of the court related to the 2006 deportations.

‘This doesn’t mean that the ruling won’t be enforced for the other citizens, but this is the first precedent where Russia has fulfilled it’s obligations for the mass deportations in 2006’, he says.

According to Khachidze there are up to 2,000 Georgian citizens who are suing the Russian government over the incident.  

Another Georgian rights group, the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), represented several other Georgians in the same case at the ECHR.

‘In both [of our] cases the court found Russia responsible’, a spokesperson for GYLA told OC Media, noting that the rulings had not been fulfilled.

Fifty-one-year-old Manana Jabelia died from a heart attack while in a detention facility; the ECHR ruled in 2016 that Russia was responsible. Russia’s Prosecutor’s Office previously claimed in 2007 that there were no signs that a crime had been committed.

The Court ruled that Russia must pay €70,000 to Jabelia’s family, but they have not done so.