As more Chechens go missing, critics blame president's son

Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, February 29, 2004

Gudermes, Russia -- Makka Salamova never got to say goodbye to her sons. The men in ski masks and camouflage who dragged them away into the night had tied her up and stuffed a rag into her mouth so she would keep quiet and out of their way.

Since that day on June 6, 2003, when Salamova lay on the floor, powerless and mute, she has heard nothing about her sons, Isa Eskiyev, 33, and Uslan Eskiyev, 30. She doesn't know who took them, where they are or whether they are alive, she said.

Last week, wiping her tears with a baby towel taken from a plastic shopping bag, Salamova, 55, stood on the sidewalk in downtown Gudermes, the second-largest city of Russia's shell-shocked breakaway republic of Chechnya, hoping to find out something -- anything -- about Isa and Uslan.

"They are innocent, innocent!" she cried. "Where are they? Where are my boys?"

Reports of the arbitrary arrests and abductions of Chechen civilians have reached such proportions since Russia sent troops to Chechnya four years ago to quash Islamic rebels that Human Rights Watch has called such disappearances a "hallmark of the conflict."

The U.S. State Department, in a report released Wednesday, criticized Russia's human rights record in Chechnya, citing reports of government involvement in "politically motivated disappearances."

The Russian human rights group Memorial, which tracks abuses in Chechnya, has documented 472 civilian disappearances in 2003 and 537 disappearances in 2002 in northern Chechnya, where about one-third of Chechens live. The rest of the republic is too dangerous for Memorial to operate in, and the group estimates that the total number of disappearances is probably three or four times higher.

Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader, Akhmad Kadyrov, admits that more than 3, 000 Chechens have disappeared since 1999. Kadyrov, who became president last October in an election international observers called a sham, blames the abductions on Russian federal troops in order to appeal to ordinary Chechens, who generally revile him.

But while decrying the disappearances, Kadyrov has not brought any perpetrators to justice. Chechens and international groups say the bloody work is done by Russian servicemen and the unruly militia run by the president's 27- year-old son, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Instead of investigating the allegations, Russian President Vladimir Putin last month scrapped the post of his special human rights envoy to Chechnya, saying Kadyrov could handle local advocacy issues in the republic on his own and dashing any hopes ordinary Chechens may have had that the disappearances will stop anytime soon. His deafening silence on disappearances suggests that Putin, almost certain to be re-elected March 14 to another four-year term, is willing to tolerate abuses against Chechen civilians in the name of promoting Kadyrov's pro-Moscow administration, human rights advocates say.

"Putin closed his eyes to abuses in Chechnya a long time ago," said Alexander Cherkasov, Memorial's expert on the strife-torn republic. "There is no reason he should suddenly change his stance after he gets re-elected. He won't interfere until the abuses start having some enormous international consequences." (*)

Putin's vows to "wipe out" the rebels helped him ascend to power in 2000. But four years later, the war has deteriorated into an increasingly unpopular quagmire that slowly bleeds Russian troops and Chechen civilians alike.

The elusive guerrillas, who control the craggy southern mountains and roam freely in the northern plains, kill an average of 10 servicemen a week and carry out suicide bombings in other parts of Russia, including Moscow. The troops retaliate heavy-handedly, breeding fear and a thirst for revenge and prompting many Chechen civilians to join the insurgents.

Kadyrov's government is supposed to take over and allow most of Russia's 80,000 troops to withdraw. But the Kremlin is no longer hazarding a guess on when that might happen.

To cut his losses, Putin wants to replace Russian troops at least partially with Chechen militias such as Ramzan Kadyrov's so-called security service -- a motley crew of about 1,000 security, police and military officers and former rebels who swapped sides.

Officially, the force, which is financed from the federal budget, is supposed to hunt down rebels and provide security to Kadyrov's father. But human rights groups and many Chechen civilians say the younger Kadyrov is running a ruthless army that kidnaps, tortures and kills civilians in private prisons he has set up, echoing the behavior of Odai Hussein, the brutal son of the former Iraqi dictator who was killed in July.

Diederik Lohman of Human Rights Watch, based in New York, sees a danger for Putin in the militia's ascendancy. "The stronger Kadyrov's army gets, the more impossible it becomes for the Russians to do anything about it without making new enemies."

Some speculate that Kadyrov, a boxing aficionado, occasionally tortures his victims personally, using them as human punching bags.

"He has torture pits. He kills people for fun, or in revenge for minor insults," said a Chechen newspaper editor who spoke on condition that his name not be used.

"I can't write about it, of course -- the father, the son and the holy ghost are off-limits," the editor joked. "I've been told very clearly that if I write about them, I would get killed."

The Kremlin and President Kadyrov, who has called the disappearances Chechnya's "sorest spot," deny any involvement in atrocities, as does Ramzan Kadyrov.

"Even if I had a private prison, I wouldn't tell you. Does that make me a bandit?" he said, grinning, at a news conference in Gudermes last week for foreign reporters who came on a tightly controlled government-led tour of Chechnya, the only legal way for foreign journalists to cover events in the republic. The Kremlin uses such trips to try to portray Chechnya as a region where life is "returning to normal" for 1.1 million civilians.

Ramzan Kadyrov said that although he frequently rounds up "guerrillas," he rarely uses force -- unless, he said, the detainees "resist."

"Naturally, if they resist, then ..." -- he whistled and punched the air for effect -- "Salaam aleikum!" He spoke the familiar Arabic phrase for "peace be with you" with a clear satirical intent.

Abductions can happen anywhere, Chechens and human rights advocates say.

Men in disguise target families trying to eke out an existence in the bombed-out ruins of apartment blocks; they drive up in unmarked cars or armored personnel carriers to people walking along shrapnel-strewn squares where craters have replaced buildings; they knock on doors in sleepy villages where charred roof beams bear witness to Russian aerial bombardments.

Most disappearances happen at night, when ordinary Chechens stay home out of fear of being mistaken for rebels or Russian soldiers and killed, since those slain are usually men of combat age.

Sometimes a simple twist of fate may decide the next target. Salamova said the men who barged into her house in the eastern village of Koshkeldy in June took her sons after they had failed to detain a genuine rebel who lived nearby.

"They took them in his stead," she said. "Is that fair?"

So many Chechens know someone taken without leaving a trace that many of the approximately 60,000 Chechen refugees living in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia say the fear of abductions keeps them from returning home despite the ever-growing pressure from authorities and President Kadyrov's promises of safety and a better life.

"I am afraid for my (teenage) sons," said Satsita Ilaldayeva, a kindergarten teacher who lives in a brown tent perched on a wind-swept swath of mud in Karabulak, Ingushetia. "Someone might decide they look like rebels."

In Grozny, Chechnya's capital, "it's better not to go outside after 10 p. m.," said Timur, an 18-year-old in a black hooded sweatshirt. "There are men in masks, walking around, shooting. They may be Chechens, they may be Russians. In the long run, when they take you, will it matter?"

E-mail Anna Badkhen at abadkhen@sfchronicle.com.

http://friendly.narod.ru/2004/info671.htm (tr by M.L.)

PRESS RELEASE No 671 on the 27th of FEBRUARY, 2004

REPORT FROM THE CHECHEN REPUBLIC

Achkhoy-Martan District. Number of victims of the truck blast near the village of Bamut grew up by five peple.

Today is 27.02.2004, from our correspondent of the Information Center of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society it was possible to get more precise information in regards to that published earlier story of explosion of the truck near the village of Bamut with the inhabitants of the settlement of Assinovskaya, who were returning home after picking hagberries (see the press release No 667 of the 26 of February, 2004).

On 26 February 2004, the residents of Assinovskaya of Chechnya's Sunzha District went to the mountains on 12 vehicles to pick hagberries [also called choke-cherries, bird's berries - Rus. cheremsha]. Representatives of the federal law-enforcement agencies on armoured personnel carriers [BTR's] stopped their trucks in the vicinity of Bamut and demanded that each truck pay R50. After paying money to those extortionists, the local residents continued their way.

On their way back to Assinovskaya, on the evening of the same day, one of the trucks hit an anti-tank mine and exploded. According to eyewitnesses, the mine was planted in the place where cherry pickers had earlier became victims of extortion by the employees of power structures of the Russian Federation. This is unlikely to be a coincidence and can testify to the involvement of the Russian military in this incident.

As a result of the explosion, nine people were killed on the spot, most of them being girls aged between 9 and 14. The wounded were urgently taken to hospitals in Grozny and in the district centre of Urus-Martan where they were provided with necessary medical aid. It's became known that five more people died today in hospitals [27 February].

Another victim of Russian soldiers

On 25.02.2004 in the vicinity of the village of Orekhovo of Achkhoy- Martan district of the Chechen republic, a young girl picking hagberrries in the woods was shot down by the Russian servicemen (probably from a sniper rifle), shot came from the side of stationing places of federal forces.

Chechens in Georgia Fear of `Secret Extraditions' 

Giorgi Sepashvili, Civil Georgia / 2004-02-29 13:20:00      Photo: Mulkoev (left) and Alkhanov disappeared on February 16, ten days after being acquitted by the Georgian court.

Mysterious disappearance of two Chechens in Georgia and later reports regarding their arrest by the Russian security forces, increased Chechen community's fears in Georgia that Tbilisi secretly apprehended their compatriots and handed them over to Moscow.

Russian media reported on February 25 that the Russian Federal Security Service detained two Chechens – Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov, at the Georgian-Russian border on February 19, while trying to cross Larsi border checkpoint. Russia claims both, Mulkoev and Alkhanov, are the Chechen militants, which fought against the Federal Troops in Chechnya.

Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov are those two Chechens, which disappeared in Georgia after being acquitted by a Tbilisi court on February 6 of having violated border regulations and entered Georgia illegally.

Two Chechens were among a group of 13 Chechens arrested by the Georgian border guards in the late summer of 2002, five of whom were forcibly extradited to Russia. However, Mulkoev and Alkhanov survived extradition due to the successful court procedures in Georgia.

Following 7 months of the court procedures, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled to decline extradition of Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov to the Russian Federation last May.

Nevertheless, they were not released as the Georgian law enforcers were accusing them of illegal crossing of the border and carrying firearms. However, the court acquitted them on February 6 2004 and were released after year and half of detention in Georgia.

A group of Chechen refugees living in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge staged a demonstration on February 18 to protest the disappearances of two Chechens, Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov.

The relatives of the two men acquitted feared they have been abducted and secretly handed over to Russia by the Georgian authorities. After the report regarding their detention, doubts over the alleged secret extradition increased.

However, officials in Georgia deny speculations, while others prefer to keep silence.

"I do not know anything about it. And I can not make any comment regarding the case," Nika Laliashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian Security Ministry told Civil Georgia.

Georgian General Prosecutor's Office makes the similar comment. "We only know that two Chechens were arrested by Russians at the border. We know this from the newswires of the Russia media," Paata Mskhiladze, who is in charge of foreign relations and extradition issues of the General Prosecutor's Office, told Civil Georgia.

Malkhaz Pataraia, who was a lawyer of two Chechens during the protracted court procedures, also told Civil Georgia that he "can not comment regarding the issue" as he is "not aware of latest developments concerning these Chechens." Another lawyer Lia Mukhashavria also prefers not to comment.

Khizri Aldamov, who is one of the leaders of the Chechen community in Georgia and led de facto representation of the Chechen Republic in Tbilisi, was the only one who agreed to talk. He is sure that Georgia has extradited two Chechens to Russia.

"The story about their detention at the border is absurd. No one would believe that they [Bekkhan Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov] went to the Russian border themselves. They did not intend to leave Georgia," Khizri Aldamov told Civil Georgia.

The Chechen community in Georgia has already sent a letter to the Georgian President, Secretary of the National Security Council and the leadership of the law enforcement agencies and requested to investigate the case. However, Chechens have little hope that their concerns would be heard by the authorities.

Chechen refugees living in Georgia's Pankisi gorge fear that recent conciliatory stance between Moscow and Tbilisi that took place after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's visit to Russia in February, might threaten their security. "Tbilisi now tries to please Moscow," Aldamov said.

Mysterious story of two Chechens coincided with the arrival of the delegation of the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) in Georgia, which paid a fact-finding visit to Tbilisi to study the cases of 13 Chechens.

After a hearing on 16 September 2003, the ECHR declared admissible the application lodged by 13 Chechens, which claim that extradition of five compatriots was illegal.

Khizri Aldamov says that Chechen community in Georgia failed to find out the whereabouts of five Chechens, which were extradited to Russia, despite many attempts. "I think they are dead," Aldamov says.

The ECHR delegation, which left for Russia after visiting Georgia for further inquiry, was informed regarding the disappearance of Mulkoev and Husein Alkhanov.

Disappearance of two Chechens was not a first case in Georgia. On February 12, 2003 Chechen refugee Adam Talalov disappeared after leaving his home in the Pankisi gorge. His whereabouts remain unknown yet.

The whereabouts of Chechen refugee Hussein Yusupov, who disappeared in 2002 after allegedly being released from a Security Ministry's detention facility, remained unknown, and there were no developments in the case so far.

Shadowy kidnappings keep Chechens on edge

By David Filipov, Globe Staff, 2/29/2004

GROZNY, Russia -- It happens every day in Chechnya, and it can happen anywhere: on the packed minibuses that carry commuters through bombed- out city streets, at the outdoor markets dotting boulevards lined with ruined apartment blocks, during prayer at battle-scarred mosques, or in the frail shelter of one's own home.    Masked, heavily armed men in unidentifiable uniforms show up in armored vehicles and demand to see documents. Sometimes, they seem to be looking for a person. Sometimes, they round up and take away every fighting-age male in their path. Some of those they detain come back telling harrowing stories of beatings and torture to family members and human rights groups.

Many never come back at all.

This is what the Kremlin's war against separatist rebels has become four years after Russian troops, warplanes, and artillery pummeled Chechnya's capital into submission: a covert campaign of attrition, pitting shadowy federal forces against a furtive, yet implacable guerrilla army that kills a dozen Russian soldiers each week.

Although the massive artillery and air attacks that flattened entire neighborhoods and villages have subsided, Russia's campaign is still dangerous for its troops and the rebels they hunt in Chechnya's shellshocked towns and in the impenetrable Caucasus mountain wilderness to the south. It is dangerous, too, for civilians who get caught in the dragnet and, rights advocates say, often end up the victims of illegal detention, torture, even summary execution.

Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration acknowledges that 317 civilians disappeared last year; 48 were found murdered and 269 are missing. But Alexander Cherkasov of Memorial, one of the groups trying to detail human rights violations despite severe restrictions imposed by the Russian military, estimates that the numbers of missing and killed may be many times higher. He said more than 3,000 Chechens had disappeared since 1999, "taken away by strangers in camouflage driving armored vehicles."

Official denial Russian authorities, trying to portray Chechnya as a success story before the March 14 election that incumbent President Vladimir V. Putin is expected to win easily, deny involvement of federal and loyalist Chechen security forces in the disappearances. They say rebels are doing the kidnapping.

It is an easy sell to many ordinary Russians, who have been terrorized by suicide attacks attributed to the Chechen rebels that have claimed more than 300 lives across the country in the past 18 months. Those attacks include the deadly Feb. 4 subway bombing in Moscow that killed 41 people and wounded more than 130, and a suicide bomb on a packed commuter train near Chechnya that killed 44 people in December.

But Moscow's dismissive attitude on the disappearances is unnerving to Chechens.

"To us, it means they can do whatever they want to us, and that no one will be punished," said Aslanbekh, a journalism student in Grozny who asked that his last name not be used. "We live in constant fear that a friend or loved one will be the next to disappear."

The US State Department last week criticized Russia's Chechnya campaign in its annual report on human rights, saying federal security forces "demonstrated little respect for basic human rights." The report cited "unlawful killings," "politically motivated disappearances," and "abuse of civilians" by federal troops and the rebels alike.

Isa Eskiyev, 33, and Uslan Eskiyev, 30, are two who vanished. It was 2 a.m. when men in masks riding in an armored personnel carrier roared up to their house in a run-down village on Chechnya's eastern frontier. They pounded on the door and said they were looking for a suspected rebel who lived in a nearby house. The Eskiyevs' mother, Makka Salamova, said the Russian-speaking intruders tied her up and stuffed a piece of cloth in her mouth, then did the same with her sons' wives. She said they beat her sons and dragged them away. That was last June, and she has not heard news of them since.

"They took innocent people," Salamova said, sobbing. She was speaking to several reporters whom Russian authorities brought to Chechnya under armed guard recently to prove Moscow's assertion that life is returning to normal in the war-shattered republic.

Asked about the automatic weapons fire that shattered the calm outside a military base in northern Grozny one night, a Russian military spokesman, Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, said, "It must have been a helicopter." The next day, pro-Russian Chechen officials reported that 10 Russian servicemen had died in rebel attacks.

Shabalkin's role was to show off the successful reconstruction of Chechnya's capital, a daunting task in a devastated city where Russian troops sweep for hidden explosive devices each morning and where every major intersection features a heavily fortified military checkpoint.

A trip to one of the first few buildings in Grozny with a newly rebuilt elevator revealed that the residents hoist water up to their unheated apartments with a bucket and rope. The gaping craters in the upper floors of nearly every apartment block drew the eye away from the newly painted street-level storefronts.

The sparkling new government compound -- rebuilt after a suicide truck bomb leveled the old one in December 2002, killing 75 people -- stood in a wasteland of devastated former factories.

Chechens who spoke out of earshot of Russian soldiers wanted to talk about disappearances, not normality.

"It's the most dangerous thing for us young men," Aslan Sakhurov, 17, said outside his temporary home in a dormitory built for returning refugees. He said half of his friends had been detained, and two never came back. `If your hair is too long, they take you. If you have a beard, they take you. If your pants are rolled up the wrong way, they say you are a [rebel]. It happens every day."

Chechnya's pro-Moscow president, Akhmad Kadyrov, who has taken on increased responsibility under Putin's normalization plan since winning an October election that international observers dismissed as a sham, told reporters one of his top tasks is to put a stop to the disappearances.

But Chechens and international human rights groups say security forces loyal to Kadyrov are responsible for many of the disappearances, holding detainees in a network of small, private jails, often pits in the ground.

"People believe that every important person in Chechnya has his own torture pit," said a Grozny journalist who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Memorial, the rights group, has documented dozens of cases in recent months implicating a special task force led by Kadyrov's son, Ramzan.

The younger Kadyrov denied the allegations and insisted he was hunting down separatist rebels, not innocent civilians.

"Even if I had a prison, I wouldn't have told you. Does that make me a bandit?" he told reporters in Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city. "I don't want people in Chechnya to disappear. . . . I have not kidnapped a single person."

But he declined to take reporters to a chicken farm in the nearby village of Avtury, which Chechen human rights advocates have reported to be a makeshift detention and torture center.

Climate of fear Investigating such allegations can be deadly. On Jan. 10, about 50 masked troops snatched Aslan Davletukayev, an activist for a rights group called the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, from his home in Avtury. The group cited witnesses as saying the soldiers beat him and took him away at gunpoint. His family hoped to pay a ransom to free him.

But Davletukayev's body was found six days later. His arms and legs were broken, and his body bore numerous stab wounds. The cause of death was a bullet in the back of his head.

Such reports are one reason Chechen refugees still living in camps in neighboring Ingushetia are reluctant to return home.

Refugees say that authorities, anxious to empty the camps before the March vote, are turning up the pressure for them to return to Chechnya. They say officials have begun turning off gas, electricity, and water.

Kadyrov denies any pressure but says conditions in Chechnya are better than in the camps. To lure refugees back, the government is offering up to $12,500 per family in compensation for destroyed property.

But only about 1,600 people have received money. Some, like, Zhunid Zakriyev, who returned to Chechnya in December after four years in Ingushetia, regret returning. The room that he, his wife, and four children share, in one of 14 brick dormitories built in Grozny for returning refugees, is too small and bare. There is no money, gas, clean water, or reliable electricity. And it is always dangerous to go outside.

"They promised us heaps of gold. Now we're here. They don't even give us bread," Zakriyev said, as his daughter Fatima, 10, began weeping. "It was better to live in the tents."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.