GUDERMES (Agencies) -- Former Chechen rebel Ramzan Kadyrov has been sworn in as president of Russia's troubled southern republic of Chechnya, BBC reported.

Russia says he has restored stability and helped rebuild the capital, Grozny.

Kadyrov took the oath at his residence in Chechnya's second city, Gudermes.

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency says he took the oath in the Russian language, keeping his hand on the Russian constitution and the Chechen constitution.

"My main goal is to make Chechnya prosperous and peaceful," Kadyrov told 2,000 guests and journalists at the inauguration that took place under high security in Gudermes, 19 miles east of Grozny. "Law and human freedoms will become the most important task, whose fulfillment I am intend to be concerned with on a daily basis," AP reported.

Kadyrov also repeated his opposition to a long-discussed separation of authority treaty with Moscow, which called for broad economic autonomy, including allowing Chechnya to keep substantial revenues from its oil wealth.

In his speech, Kadyrov pledged that Chechnya would always remain part of Russia.

"We fully realize that our well-being is impossible without a strong and stable Russia," he said.

Alu Alkhanov, the former police chief who became president after Akhmad Kadyrov's assassination, had warned about a growing personality cult around Kadyrov.

Kadyrov has repeatedly praised Putin — including calling for him to stay on as president despite the two-term limit — but has harshly criticized the Russian government and the state-run oil company that controls much of Chechnya's oil infrastructure.

Underscoring the issue of rights abuses, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that the Russian government was responsible for the disappearance and presumed killing of a Chechen man during a military sweep in 2000.

Asmart Magomedovna Baysayeva, 49, from Pobedinskoye near the Chechen capital Grozny, accused Russia of being responsible for the death of her husband, Shakhid Baysayev, who vanished in March 2000 on his way to work, AFP reported.

The same day, a special operation by the Russian government forces had been conducted in the village to identify members of illegal armed groups.

In August that year, with no news of her husband, Baysayeva was offered a video by a masked stranger in military uniform who claimed to have information about his disappearance.

She bought the video from him showing her husband lying on the ground, being kicked by a soldier. He was then taken away by soldiers towards partially destroyed buildings.

The European Court of Human Rights said that the arrest of Shakhid Baysayev had coincided with the military operation carried out the same day and, citing the video, said it believed he had died following his detention.

"The Court concluded that it had been established beyond reasonable doubt that Shakhid Baysayev had to be presumed dead following his unacknowledged detention by State servicemen," the court said in its written ruling.

"Noting that the authorities did not rely on any ground of justification in respect of the use of lethal force by their agents, it followed that liability for his presumed death was attributable to the Russian Government."

An estimated 100,000 civilians, soldiers and insurgents have died in Chechnya since 1994.