STRASBOURG, France, April 5 (Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights has awarded more than 50,000 euros ($66,700) in damages to a woman from Russia's Chechnya region whose husband disappeared during a security sweep by federal troops.

Thursday's judgment is the sixth time in a row the court has found against Russia in a case related to Chechnya, a violent region of southern Russia where rights activists accuse Moscow's forces of systematic abuse of civilians.

The court ruled Russia had failed to protect the life of Shakhid Baysayev, who went missing on his way to work in 2000, and that the authorities failed to carry out a proper investigation into his disappearance.

The court said it had concluded that "the liability for his presumed death was attributable to the Russian government".

Among the evidence presented to the court was an amateur videotape obtained by the missing man's wife, Asmart, which showed Baysayev lying on the ground being kicked by a soldier and then being taken away towards some disused buildings.

In the video, Baysayev was wearing a brown sheepskin coat. After her husband went missing, Asmart Baysayeva and two local investigators went to the buildings where they found a fragment of cloth that looked like it came from his coat.

Soon afterwards, she was told the two investigators had died when their car blew up on the way to the prosecutor's office.

Local prosecutors opened a criminal investigation but failed to establish what happened to Baysayev or identify those responsible for his apparent abduction.

Moscow send thousands of troops to Chechnya a decade ago to put down a rebellion by separatist rebels. Fighting flared again after President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000 and ordered a new crackdown.

Large-scale fighting has now died down and Moscow is scaling back its troop presence.

Rights groups accuse federal troops of conducting indiscriminate sweeps -- known as "chistki" or clean-ups -- through Chechen villages in search of insurgents. Dozens of those detained in this way have never returned home.

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