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Interior Ministry Says Over 600 Abducted in Chechnya in 2003 Created: 14.04.2004 15:39 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:51 MSK, MosNews An estimated 605 people were abducted in Chechnya in 2003, the Russian Interior Ministry reported on Wednesday. ?According to official information, 854 people were abducted in the Southern Federal District last year, including 605 in the Chechen Republic,? the Interfax news agency quoted Boris Gavrilov, deputy head of the Interior Ministry?s investigations committee, as saying. ?Two hundred fifty-three people were released after being taken hostage in the Southern Federal District, including 51 people in the Chechen Republic,? the official said. Kidnappings are
common in Chechnya and both pro-Moscow authorities and separatist guerillas
accuse the opposite side of abductions and extrajudicial killings. Some
of the victims were workers of foreign companies and aid organizations,
including Arjan Erkel, the head of a branch of the Medecins Sans Frontieres
organizations released at the past weekend after spending over 18 months
in captivity. Video images suggest Russian atrocities in Chechnya Federal forces first betrayed, then tortured and murdered separatist guerrillas in the Urus-Martan district southwest of Grozny after the guerrillas surrendered some four years ago in response to an offer of amnesty. That is the conclusion drawn by Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya gazeta from what she described in an April 12 article as a "sensational videotape" recently obtained by her newspaper. The video, stills from which can be seen on the newspaper's website (http://2004.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2004/25n/n25n-s12.shtml), shows Chechen prisoners being transferred at gunpoint from freight carriers. On the side of the freight carriers is the Russian abbreviation for "Ministry of Justice." According to Politkovskaya's accompanying article, she and her colleagues believe the prisoners to be those who accepted a federal offer of amnesty in the year 2000, ending the siege of the village of Komsomolskoye. That conclusion, she wrote, is based not only on the account of the junior officer of a Ministry of Justice commando unit who gave Novaya gazeta the video, but also on her newspaper's own research among relatives of the guerrillas who surrendered at that time. Three families said that they recognized their own men among those shown on the video. In March of 2000 federal officials announced that some seventy-two rebel guerrillas had surrendered at Komsomolskoye and that all were being amnestied. The families of the three seen on the video told Novaya gazeta that they had heard at the time that these three had accepted the offer of amnesty--but that the three never did in fact return to their homes. Quite possibly the video shows them only shortly before they were killed. It is known, wrote Politkovskaya, that all the captives from Komsomolskoye were sent to a prison at Chernokozovo. Other Chechen prisoners, who were held there at the same time but later released, have said that they were forced to load onto freight carriers the bodies of dead guerrillas from Komsomolskoye. The dead evidently had been killed quite recently, at Chernokozovo itself, because rigor mortis had not yet set in. Their bodies showed signs of torture. "This video recalls only one image: movies about Nazi concentration camps," wrote Politkovskaya. She noted that the captive guerrillas included two women, who unlike the men did not show signs of beating and who were being led off somewhere. The video shows seventy-four men and adolescent boys being herded onto two freight carriers; Russian voices are heard off-stage saying that "they said 72, but there are 74." Most of the male prisoners seen in the video are able to walk under their own power, but some have to be carried by their comrades. Almost all are wounded, some have missing limbs. Many are emaciated, and many are barefoot or even fully naked. Some seem utterly disoriented, unable to understand commands. No doctors or nurses are visible among the Russian soldiers guarding the prisoners. As ordered by these guards, the prisoners unload comrades who have died while being transported, forming a mountain of corpses next to the railroad tracks. There is not the slightest sign of the guards trying to distinguish between those who have been given guarantees of amnesty and other prisoners. According to Politkovskaya, the Russian officer who made this video at first enjoyed showing it to his friends and family after his return from Chechnya. "But time passed, and he came to a sober, horrified realization of what he himself had done." Making the video public was his own idea; he hopes it will help free him from "a nightmare which continues to torture him right up to the present."
Svetlana Gannushkina: "The closure of the Danish Refugee Council is a real disgrace" We call your attention to some extracts from the statement by head of the Migration and Law Network of the Human Rights Center Memorial, chair of the Civic Assistance Committee, and a member of the Presidential Human Rights Commission Svetlana Gannushkina: (...) The Stavropol Regional Court made the decision: the Danish Refugee Council must stop its activity on the territory of Russia. (...) The Council is accused of its directors' not notifying the Ministry of Justice of changes in the governing body of the organization and changes in its legal address. The Danish Refugee Council is the oldest refugee agency. Its closure on such a minor ground is a real disgrace. This organization implements a program of providing help to internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Chechnya and in Chechnya. Its work is financed for the most part by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The Council performed this work perfectly. It created a database on inhabitants of camps and temporary accommodation centers in Chechnya. This data was always the most accurate, and the organization readily shared its information with colleagues, in particular, with our offices in Nazran and Chechnya. When Russian migration agencies stopped providing aid [to IDPs] by various reasons, only food parcels and clothes delivered by the Council saved them. (...) Now the representative office of the Danish Refugee Council is slapped in the face in spite of being given thanks. What explanation can be provided for it except the aspiration to remove from Russia all those who, occupied with humanitarian activity, cannot but see the violations of international standards that accompany the return of IDPs to Chechnya? Author: Svetlana Gannushkina, chair of the Civic Assistance Committee, director of the Migration and Law Program, board member of the Human Rights Center Memorial Source: Human Rights in Russia Website Danish Refugee Council to continue humanitarian activity in Ingushetia The liquidation of the humanitarian charitable organization Danish Refugee Council in Stavropol Region will bear no influence on the further work of the International Danish Refugee Council in Ingushetia and Chechnya, a representative of the Council's Moscow office told the Caucasian Knot correspondent on April 14. The decision on the liquidation of the charitable organization Danish Refugee Council was made by the Stavropol Regional Court. "First, it should be taken into consideration that the Stavropol Danish Refugee Council was registered as a Russian non-governmental organization. It is an independent juridical person. The decision by the Stavropol Court cannot be rated as the liquidation of our organization as a whole," the Council's representative said via phone. "We work in total compliance with the Russian legislation, and Russian authorities, at least, have not notified us of any claims they have against us." All accusations that the organization provides financial support to Chechen rebels are "sheer nonsense", the Council's representative added. In conformity with its status, the organization provides food aid to people in need both on the territory of Ingushetia and Chechnya and in North Osetia and Dagestan. Author: Malika Suleymanova Source: Own correspondent
Details of bombing in Rigakhoy village The Memorial Human Rights Center published information on April 13 that a woman and five children were killed in the April 9 bombing in the mountainous village of Rigakhoy, Chechnya's Vedeno district. The same day, chief of the press service of the Air Force Colonel Aleksandr Drobishevsky made a statement denying the involvement of his department in the tragedy in Rigakhoy. Representatives of the Center visited the site of the incident and got more specific information. According to it, on April 8, between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., a bombing attack (350F 5-90 is a number of one of the bombs) was made on the remote mountainous settlement of Rigakhoy in the Vedeno district. The house of Imar-Ali Damayev took a direct hit, which killed almost all members of his family: his wife - Maidat Tsintsayeva (b. 1975) and children - Djansi (b. 1999), Zharadat (b. 2000), Umar-Khazhi (b. 2002), Zara (b. 2003), and Zura (b. 2003). The capacity of the explosion can be estimated by the fact that the family's sheep and a horse that were out were killed. Locals reported that officials of the Vedeno district military prosecutor's and prosecutor's offices visited the village at about 10 a.m. on April 13. They conducted a perfunctory inspection of the site and said that a landmine had detonated there and they saw no grounds for launching criminal investigation into the case. "Such "versions" do not correspond with the circumstances at all. We hope that the tragedy in the village of Rigakhoy will be thoroughly investigated nevertheless, and the guilty will be punished," reads the statement by the Memorial Center. Source: Human Rights Center "Memorial" (Moscow, Russia)
14.4.2004 Extrajudicial executions in Chechnya Chechnya, Grozny. (SNO Press Center). On the morning of April 11 in thevillage of Stari Atagi in the Grozny region, Russian security forcesseized 26 year old Ruslan Sambiev and took him in an unknown direction.According to witnesses, soldiers in masks robbed the Sambiev house atdawn and, without accusing him of anything, took Ruslan with them. On the night of the same day, Ruslan’s corpse was found in the villageof Prigorodni, bearing the marks of torture and gunshot wounds to the head. As PRIMA news has already reported, on the morning of April 9 in Groznytook Masud Magomedov, an employee of a Chechen radio company, was takenfrom his home by Russian security forces. According to informationreceived by SNO from Masud’s relatives, two days ago Masud, after crueltorture and beating, was dropped off by his kidnappers on the outskirtsof the village Chechen-Aul in the Grozny region. The identities of thekidnappers have yet to be ascertained. Translated by Rebecca Gould |