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eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 9/7/2004 'Clean-up' in refugee camp Law enforcement and security agencies launched a "clean-up" in the refugee camp in Yandare, Nazran district, Ingushetia, at about 8 a.m. this morning. Imran Ezhiev, chairman of the Chechen-Ingush regional office of the Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship (SRCF) who lives in the above-mentioned refugee camp himself, managed to get through to the editorial office at the SRCF office in Nizhny Novgorod and reported developments in the camp. However, the call was interrupted in several minutes, suddenly. This is what the SRCF press center said in its release today. Ezhiev said the camp that is quartered in reequipped cow-sheds was blocked by a lot of armed officers of joint police units. These were the same units that had carried out the "clean-up" in the refugee camp in Altievo on July 23-24, 2004. Imran was just able to say, "They are making all of us stand against the walls. They are going to take our cell phones." After this, the call was interrupted. For the time being, Ezhiev's phone is disconnected. Many of the staff at the press center for the SRCF office in the North Caucasus live in that very refugee camp. Around three hundred people live in this camp currently which is run by the SRCF. The majority of male residents had to leave it in late June when mass detentions of Chechen refugees started in Ingushetia. Meanwhile, the editorial office learnt at 9.25 a.m. that the military had allowed Kilab Ezhiev, a technical assistant at the SRCF press center's office in Karabulak, Ingushetia, to leave the camp. Source: Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship 9.7.2004 Chechen Women Prepared for Civil Disobedience CHECHNYA, Shali. (ORChD [Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship] Information Centre) The mothers, sisters and wives of people who have at some time been kidnapped in Chechnya by Federal and Chechen pro-Moscow forces held a meeting on 7 July in Shali. The women decided that in the event of further inaction on the part of law-enforcement agencies regarding the investigation of these crimes, they would reserve the right to engage in acts of civil disobedience. In particular, the women declared their readiness to block the Rostov-Baku federal highway and the main roads linking district centres. The women are also prepared to stage continuous demonstrations and hunger strikes. Translated by Sue-Ann Harding PRIMA News Agency [2004-07-08-Chech-06] Families meet wall of silence in seeking Ingushetia's missing men By MARK MacKINNON From Saturday's Globe and Mail, June 10, 2004 Nazran, Russia — Bashir Mutsulgov was in deep conversation with one of his students from a nearby college when two cars intercepted him just metres from his front door. Before he could get inside, witnesses say, masked men wearing camouflage gear rushed out of the cars, shoved the student aside with their Kalashnikov rifles, forced Mr. Mutsulgov into a jeep and drove off. That was in December, and it was the last time the 28-year-old math and physics teacher has been seen. Since then, his brother, Magomed, has been trying to find out what happened to Bashir, one of dozens of young men to disappear in Ingushetia over the past seven months. The car into which he was shoved was seen that night at the local headquarters of the Federal Security Bureau, the successor to the dreaded KGB, and then later at a checkpoint heading into the war-torn neighbouring republic of Chechnya. Magomed says the traffic police who saw the car enter Chechnya told him that the driver flashed an FSB badge and drove toward the main Russian military base at Khankala, near Grozny. He is furious thinking about what might have happened to his brother since then. "The men who work [at Khankala] described what they do with such people. Usually they beat them into signing documents. I'm sure he'll be called a terrorist. That's what they do to intelligent people," Magomed said. He thinks Bashir may have come under suspicion because he is a devout Muslim and had begun to study Arabic. "Now all we're trying to do is find out whether he's alive or dead." Bashir's case was the first in a string of "disappearances" that have rocked the tiny southern Russian republic of Ingushetia. Human-rights activists in the region have compiled a list of more than 40 people, mostly young men, who have gone missing in the past seven months. Such tactics have long been associated with the war next door in Chechnya, where Russian forces are known to detain suspected Islamic militants for long periods without trial and without informing their families where they are being held. Many turn up dead or are never heard from again. Chechen fighters, meanwhile, use kidnapping for ransom as a means of raising cash to continue their struggle for independence. But the disappearances are new in Ingushetia, which suddenly finds itself at risk of being drawn into the decade-old fight to the east. Some say the security services are cracking down on people they see as sympathizers with the Chechen cause. "According to our information, it's mostly the FSB that's involved in the disappearances in Ingushetia," said Shamil Tangiev, head of the Grozny office of the Russian human-rights organization Memorial. "At the moment, we're witnessing a major conflict between the special services and Wahhabis," who follow a radical strain of Islam. "The special-service method is to kill suspects without a trial." One of the first to notice the rising number of abductions in Ingushetia was a young prosecutor, Rashid Ozdoyev. The 27-year-old did his own investigation, then flew to Moscow to present a report to his superiors that directly implicated the FSB. When he got back to Nazran, he too disappeared. His father, Boris, a retired judge and a former member of the Ingush parliament, has no doubt that the FSB is behind his son's disappearance. He says he even got an FSB officer to confess, on tape, to having taken part in the abduction, saying it was personally ordered by the local FSB chief, Colonel Sergei Koriakov. Mr. Ozdoyev, 60, has written several appeals to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but neither the FSB nor his son's former colleagues at the prosecutor's office have opened an investigation into the matter. Instead, he has received death threats warning him to stop asking so many questions. The president of Ingushetia, former KGB officer Murat Zyazikov, has publicly denied that abductions are on the rise. "Nobody from the FSB will even speak about it with me. They never even looked for him. They smile at me and tell me I have no son," Mr. Ozdoyev said, his voice taut with controlled anger. Like many on the streets of Nazran, Mr. Ozdoyev blames the abductions for the rising tension in the republic, which boiled over in June when unknown gunmen attacked local police headquarters and the Interior Ministry office, killing 88 people, mostly police officers. He believes many of the attackers were relatives of the missing men. "That tragedy had connections with these disappearances. If I wasn't so old, I would have joined them myself and become a martyr and blown up Koriakov and the others. This is the way terrorism is born," he said. "There has been a lot of bloodshed, and I promise there will be more." Oil Company Executive, His Son Kidnapped in Chechen Capital Created: 09.07.2004 13:27 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:29 MSK, MosNews A top executive of the Grozneftegaz oil and gas company and his son have been kidnapped in the Chechen capital city, Grozny, the Interfax news agency reports. The agency cited a source in the Staropromyslovsky district police station as saying that soon after midnight on Friday, unidentified persons in camouflage fatigues and armed with automatic weapons broke into the house of Alvi Asiyev, the director of the technology branch of the Grozneftebank oil and gas company. The assailants kidnapped the executive and his son, Adam, who is a student, and drove them away. They also stole 40,000 rubles from the executive's house, the source said. Law enforcers took immediate measures to detain the kidnappers, but they managed to escape undetected. An investigation is under way to establish the identities of the abductors and to free the victims.