|
Aid agency accuses Russia of complicity in kidnapping TEXT: Combined report Medicines Sans Frontiers said on Wednesday that Russian and Dagestani officials were involved in the kidnapping of Arjan Erkel, an aid worker with the international agency. 19 months after Erkel, a Dutch national, was kidnapped in Dagestan, MSF has accused Russia of being involved, saying the kidnapping was aimed at ''silencing those criticizing conditions in neighbouring Chechnya''. MSF openly accused officials in Russia of being involved in kidnappings in the southern republic of Dagestan. The head of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Jean-Herve Bradol, said his kidnapping was aimed at silencing criticism of conditions in Chechnya. Some very powerful people are involved, including parliamentarians, Bradol claimed in an interview to the AFP news agency. ''After 19 months of pragmatism we have decided to break the silence,'' he said. ''We do not make these comments lightly. Some very powerful people are involved, including parliamentarians. Everyone knows that.'' Bradol accused the Russian authorities of leading a pressure and intimidation campaign against those still talking about Chechnya, where, he said, ''a crime on an exceptional scale'' has been taking place over the past decade. He said they had seen evidence that their colleague was still alive in October, but believed he was suffering from a lung infection and faced execution threats. Erkel was seized by three unknown gunmen in August 2002. Erkel headed the Dagestani section of MSF, based in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. He was kidnapped late in the evening on his way home after visiting friends who lived on the outskirts of Makhachkala. Three men armed with pistols attacked him and forced him into their Lada car, police reported. According to some reports, Erkel was returning home by car when the abductors ordered his car to stop, forced his driver to the floor and then bundled Erkel into another car that sped off. No ransom request was ever made. Incidentally, only a week before Erkel's abduction MSF had said it was suspending its operations in Chechnya, following the news of the abduction of Nina Davidovich, the head of the Russian NGO Druzhba. In an official statement released following her abduction the MSF strongly condemned the kidnapping of Ms. Davidovich and urged all parties to ensure her immediate release. 18 months before Erkel's abduction Kenneth Gluck, another MSF aid worker, was kidnapped in Chechnya. He spent 26 days in captivity before being released unharmed. 39-year-old Gluck, head of MSF's operations in the North Caucasus, was abducted on January 9, 2001 by armed men while travelling in an unarmed humanitarian convoy near the village of Starye Atagi in Chechnya. Since late 1998, Gluck and his team had been helping to rebuild and support clinics and hospitals in Chechnya for people who had been trapped by the war without access to medical care. Gluck was forced into a car, but the gunmen allowed him to take his medicine with him (Gluck suffers from asthma). He spent almost a month in a cellar before he was released and brought to the house of a doctor who lived in Atagi. Federal commanders then triumphantly reported on a successful operation that resulted in Gluck's liberation. However, the doctor's story was quite different. Upon returning to the Moscow office of MSF he said that the notorious rebel leader Shamil Basyaev personally apologized to him for the incident. At approximately the same time a Chechen separatist web site posted a letter written by Basayev, in which the warlord explained that he had mistaken the doctor for a spy. A year after Erkel's kidnapping MSF launched an international campaign to put pressure on Russia to help secure his release. In February this year the United Nations warned the Kremlin not to expect any increase in its or other aid agency staff in Chechnya until the kidnapped Dutch aid worker was set free. 10 March 18:10 Gazeta ru 10 March 2004, Volume V, Issue 10 CHECHNYA WEEKLY: News and Analysis on the Crisis in Chechnya Journalists, rights campaigners under threat from the Kremlin The Russian journalist Yelena Tregubova, target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt after she wrote a candid book about life inside Putin's Kremlin, has fled to a foreign country. She is so fearful of a second attempt, according to an article in the March 7 Washington Post, that she prefers not even to identify that country. Tregubova's book, "Tales of a Kremlin Digger," makes it clear that Putin's team harbored a special hatred of journalists who contradicted the official line about Chechnya. When she persistently raised the issue of the Federal Security Service's (FSB) kidnapping four years ago of Andrei Babitsky of Radio Liberty, deputy chief of the Kremlin staff Vladislav Surkov angrily denounced Babitsky as "an enemy of the Russian state." From Natalya Gervorkian, who was working at the time on an authorized biography of Putin, Tregubova received what she calls "precise confirmation that Putin himself was directly involved in the whole affair of the kidnapping." Tregubova also recalls that "during the entire period when Babitsky was being held captive, not one of my colleagues in the press had the slightest doubt: Unless we kept yelling at the authorities every day, every hour with all our might to demand his release, they would simply kill him in secret." Meanwhile, the increasingly confident Putin administration has also continued to tighten its grip on non-journalists critical of Moscow's policies in Chechnya, and foreigners are not exempt. According to an article posted on the Gazeta.ru website on March 6, the Russian Foreign Ministry has denied the well known human rights advocate Lord Frank Judd of the United Kingdom a visa to visit Moscow. Lord Judd, former rapporteur on Chechnya for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, was to have visited Moscow to receive a prize from a coalition of Russian organizations working for a negotiated settlement in the republic. In addition, a Moscow court has fined Russian human rights activist Mikhail Koukobaka 700 rubles--more than two days' pay for the average Muscovite--for taking part in a peaceful demonstration against the Putin administration's policies in Chechnya. According to a March 3 report by the Prima news agency, similar cases have been brought against other organizers of the February 23 demonstration (see Chechnya Weekly, February 25), including Lev Ponomarev, who heads the movement For Human Rights. Human rights organizations in Russia have obtained copies of a directive used to carry out special operation "Hurricane-4," a set of special anti-Chechen and anti-Caucasian security measures imposed on major Russian cities in recent months and weeks. This document makes it clear that current police harassment of Chechens living in Moscow is part of a specially designed policy. This is important evidence about the methods and aims of official Chechenophobia. The situation has become very intense in recent days. Chechens in Moscow report staying up late in anticipation of nighttime raids on their homes, which often lead to interrogations and arrests. They frequently suffer beatings and other humiliations during detentions and document checks. Such operations are also giving the Moscow police more opportunities to extort bribes. On February 27 and March 3, 2004, alarming anti-Chechen and anti-Muslim raids and mass arrests were carried out by troops waiting in trucks near Moscow's Historical and Memorial Mosques. Over 100 people were detained. The following document is a directive sent to district and neighborhood militia branch offices in Moscow on February 27, 2004, as part of operation "Hurricane-4." It was distributed and discussed at the March 3 session of the cultural organization Daymokh. INTERIOR MINISTRY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION Main Directorate of Interior Affairs of the City of Moscow Administration of Internal Affairs Central Administrative okrug, Moscow 109180 Moscow ul. B. Polianka, d. 7/10, str. 2 Tel. 230-35-90 In accordance with directive No. 84/778 of 2/27/2004 of the Moscow Main Administration of Internal Affairs and in the framework of implementing special operations "Hurricane-4" and "Whirlwind-Antiterror" please find enclosed for the territory to be serviced address lists for persons who are natives of the North Caucasus region, for processing according to the following specifications: For those permanently registered at the present location, it is obligatory to obtain: - copy of Form No. 1; - copy of documentary evidence of right to living space (sales agreement, record of gift, mortgage, etc.); - copy of financial account; - excerpt from residence book; - explanations from persons (neighbors, janitors, technical personnel) having information about life style, source of income, automobile transport used (including make and license number), and about persons visiting the address of the investigated (special attention to be paid to women); - explanations from the investigated which reflect answers to the following questions: 1. basic data (Last name, first name, birthdate, family status, data on spouse, children etc.) 2. where and how acquired living space, place of origin, work place, occupation, ownership of telephones (home, work, mobile), whether lived on territory of Chechen republic, work place and occupation in the Chechen Republic; 3. presence of relatives in North Caucasus Region (if present - biographical data, addresses), evidence of their visits to the residence; 4. whether relatives perished during military actions in the Chechen republic. For persons with temporary registration at the location, it is obligatory to obtain: - copy of card from I.D. photo catalogue with evidence of processing by IAG; - copy of the affidavit submitted to the passport office of the person vouching for the temporary registration in Moscow; - copy of the temporarily registered person's statement with signatures (chiefs of passport office, district militia) confirming permission to register; - explanation from the responsible renter which reflects the circumstances of the registration of the person in question (who is sponsoring the registered, from where he came, type of occupation in Moscow, life style, lives permanently at place of registration or periodically, etc.); - collect explanations from the registered which reflect answers to the following questions: 1. basic data (Last name, first name, birthdate, family status, data on spouse, children etc.) 2. circumstances of registration at the address (place of origin, work place, type of occupation in Moscow, ownership of telephones (home, work, mobile), presence of autotransport; 3. existence of previous temporary registration in Moscow (address of registration); 4. presence of relatives in the North Caucasus Region (if present - biographical data, addresses); 5. whether relatives perished during military actions in the Chechen republic. Persons residing at the address without temporary registration or causing suspicion are to be brought to the district Internal Affairs office, where they are to be processed using the possibilities of IAG, results to be forwarded to the Section on Organized Crime of the Administration of Internal Affairs of the Central Administrative Okrug of the city of Moscow. The resulting materials and detailed memorandum about the work carried out (on magnetic resources and in printed form) to be delivered to the Section on Organized Crime of the Administration of Internal Affairs of the Central Administrative Okrug of the city of Moscow (Rm. 8) no later than 10 March 2004, for the discussion of materials and transmission to Main Directorate of Interior Affairs of the city of Moscow. Considering that the present question is under the personal control of the chief of the Main Directorate of Interior Affairs of Moscow, I warn you that you will be held personally responsible for falsifications of the collected evidence. Attached: list on 2 pages, 15 persons to be investigated Interim Chief Colonel of the Militia I.V. Zinoviev Michaela Pohl,
Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College, has written extensively
about post-Soviet politics and ethnic relations. Zaindi Choltaev, a
former official of the separatist Maskhadov government, was a visiting
fellow at the Kennan Institute in Washington last year. The Jamestown Foundation |