| May 23rd
2004 · Prague Watchdog
Hearing-impaired children still lack boarding school
Timur Aliyev, North Caucasus - Chechen children with hearing impairments are still unable to be boarded in their special school, stated deputy head Manash Payzulayeva. "For two years the school has been occupied by the federals so the children have been crowded into another, though smaller, building," Payzulayeva said.
The problem arose when the school, located in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny, was taken over as a command post during military operations and has not yet been given back. "We have to teach in a building that hasn't been properly adapted for our lessons," she explained. At present there are 383 children with hearing impairments registered in Chechnya, of which only 75 are being taught by the staff of this boarding house.
Unfortunately, this place is not large enough to accommodate all the children. Therefore, only 30 are able to be boarded here; the remaining 45, who are less handicapped, live at home and are day students, she added. However, education will soon
suffer another blow. "In two months we must leave this building as
well," Payzulayeva stated sadly.
A sensational document on our website. Rashid Ozdoyev and other kidnapped people are killed - describes FSB's employee. A sensational document has been submitted to our editorial staff - a statement to the General Prosecutor's office of I. Onishchenko - FSB's employee for the Stavropol territory, who was commissioned to the UFSB of Ingushetia and worked there for sometime. Onishchenko asserts that he was carrying out special assignements of chief of the UFSB of Ingushetia - Koryakov. He was abducting and liquidating people, he particicipated also in the kidnapping of senior assistant attorney of Ingushetia Rashid Ozdoyev, who was giving a lot trouble for Koryakov. We do not know, if this document is genuine, but it has been accurately established that Onishchenko actually had worked in Ingushetia, that his statement has been received by the General Prosecutor's office of Russia and it was transmitted for investigation to the administration of the General Prosecutor's office for Southern Federal region [okrug].
Text and copy of that document are given below:
To the Prosecutor-General of Russia from Igor N. Onishchenko
Writes to you himself an active employee of the FSB RF for the Stavropol territory, who has worked in the FSB for Ingushetia on the special assignement.
Today I ended my mission and I returned home. This weighs on my conscience As an operative officer in the organs FSB I've been working for almost 12 years. But I did not think that working with chief of FSB for Ingushetia Koryakov - it was going to torment me now. Chief of FSB on Ingushetia Korayakov - is a terrible person in our system, although he indicates that he's been sent to work by personally by Patrushev and Putin. This vile maggot annihilates people only for this that they are Ingushes and Chechens. Possibly, in his life he had got offended earlier by someone from these nations and therefore he hates them. Koryakov has forced me and my collegues - there are 5 people working for him - to systematically beat up all these who we detain under the guise of ROSH employees.
Further, according to one scheme. Special clothes, masks, other certificates, camouflage, motor vehicles, as a rule - switched only licence plates, special pass and other, about which you know better me. Under the guise of leaving the limits of Magas - we have been cruising, in essence returning in other machines again to our building - and were finishing people off. The whole work was going on only at night. In the daytime we were making up for the loss of sleep. Koryakov had to report to Moscow, that work goes on and to justify a title of General, gotten recently. For this there was a plan - within a week, a minimum of 5 people. In the beginning of 2003, when I was commissioned, we actually detained only those, who were participating. But after September, when Koryakov became very brutal because of what that, as he spoke - attorney, we began to capture [people] without any investigation [razbor] only on their appearance. As Koryakov was saying - what's a difference - they're all maggots [gnidy].
I've personally with Sergei mutilated more than 50 people. Buried about 35. By the way - I organized and conducted - on an instruction of the General all executions at the FSB's building and Vadim and Sergei were helping me.
I today arrived home. They awarded me for an honorable service. Because of our last operation in the removal of local attorney, for the fact that he had compromising material [kompromat] on Koryakov. General had been hunting him for long time. The attorney's certificate and service weapon - I've destroyed, I broke all his extremities. In the same at night Koryakov gave a order also to others to get rid of them. Soon there's my dear holiday Easter. I'm guilty. I cannot state this officially, because I've signed, as you know, document about a non- disclosure of information. Furthermore, I need my work, and there's no other one, and have to feed my family. You understand, if I come and will describe this, Koryakov will kill and bury me, as with all of those with whom we've done it. But I write you, because I fear God. I regret it.
This is a pure truth, sometimes people learn nevertheless. I do not know - if I whether by this letter can wash off my sins before God.
Igor N. Onishchenko http://www.ingushetiya.ru/news/3584.html (tr. by M.L.)
May 24, 2004 <>MOSCOW (MT) -- Prosecutors have charged a Chechen woman with recruiting suicide bombers to carry out attacks in the capital, Kommersant reported Friday.
Zara Murtazaliyeva, 21, was arrested in March after being closely watched by law enforcement officials since the double suicide bombings at the Tushino rock concert in July, the newspaper said. During that time, she was repeatedly seen talking to young Moscow- based Chechen women about Islam and the holy duties of believers, the report said.
Monday, May 24th, 2004 By YURI BAGROV, Associated Press VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) - The masked men, bold and beefy, drive up in cars without license plates. In full view of witnesses, they seize their prey, shove him in the car and speed off. Weeks pass, then months - the victim isn't heard from again.
That has happened more than 40 times this year alone in the Russian republic of Ingushetia, say human rights groups that are demanding answers to the rising wave of abductions. Officials say almost nothing in response. Ingushetia, smaller than Rhode Island with a population of about 300,000, is a tiny fragment of the restive Caucasus region. Its president, Murat Zyazikov, has promoted it as a place of prosperity and stability, in contrast to its neighbor, Chechnya.
But the kidnappings have become a grim echo of the fear that grips Chechnya, where the forces fighting separatist rebels allegedly abduct civilians with impunity. Tens of thousands of Chechens have fled to Ingushetia, hoping to escape such abuses.
Now "the same thing that's been happening in Chechnya is happening in Ingushetia: abductions and killings," said Usam Baysayev of the Memorial human rights group's office in Nazran, Ingushetia's main city. Although the Chechen war has occasionally spilled into Ingushetia and Russian officials believe that rebels take shelter there, the wave of kidnappings has no obvious connection with the war. The victims are Ingush, not Chechen, and there is no obvious pattern as to who is seized. Young and old, rich and poor, politically connected and intensely private people - all have gone missing. Experts say they suspect the victims' probable destination is Chechnya - specifically Khankala, the base of Moscow's Federal Security Service or FSB, the main successor agency of the KGB. Zyazikov, the Ingush president, is a former high official in the FSB.
"Formerly, bandits and slave traders could easily cross the borders of Chechnya and take captives from all over Russia," military columnist Vyacheslav Izmailov wrote recently in the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.(*) "Now it's officers of law enforcement agencies, and it seems they are digging pits at Khankala not just for Chechens but also for the inhabitants of other regions of Russia." Keeping prisoners in pits is a widespread practice in the Caucasus, employed by bandits, rebels and even Russian soldiers. One Ingush victim was Timur Yandiyev, a systems administrator for the Internet provider in Nazran. "We found out from traffic police that the car went to Chechnya," said his brother Marat. He said the car was stopped at a checkpoint "but they flashed FSB passes, and our traffic police don't have the right to inspect their cars."
For two months, the family tried in vain to get any answers from the Interior Ministry, the prosecutor's office and the FSB. Regional law enforcement agencies and the Russian Prosecutor General's office refused to comment on the abductions to The Associated Press other than to say an investigation into one abduction was under way. About 1,500 desperate relatives rallied in protest in Nazran at the end of March. The deputy interior minister of Ingushetia, Zyaudin Kotiyev, surrounded by riot troops, persuaded the people to disperse. The police took a few of the organizers with them, including Timur Yandiyev's father. Three hours later, he returned home, shaken. "He told me that he was threatened. They hinted that if we show up at a protest again, I could disappear just like my brother did," Marat Yandiyev said.
At the beginning of March, 29-year-old Rashid Ozdoyev was kidnapped. He had worked in the republic prosecutor's office, overseeing the legality of FSB actions. Five days before he was grabbed he had been in Moscow, filing a 14-page complaint against the Ingush FSB with the Russian general prosecutor's office. His father, Boris Ozdoyev, a well-connected retired judge, conducted his own investigation, showing pictures to people who work at detention centers. He found out that his son's car had been blocked by several FSB cars, and that he was taken first to Vladikavkaz, in neighboring North Ossetia, and eventually to Khankala. Ozdoyev failed to get a meeting or any answers from the local FSB head, Sergei Koryakov. But he said he got plenty of anonymous phone calls warning him to stop the search. "I'm on the knife's edge, I know that. Still, I want to find justice or I won't be able to stand alongside my son before the Almighty," Ozdoyev said.
His cousin, Musa Ozdoyev, a member of the Ingush parliament and a former adviser to Zyazikov, wrote an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin alleging corruption, embezzlement and vote-rigging under Zyazikov. "The fact that the special services are engaged in the abductions is beyond doubt," Musa Ozdoyev said to the AP. "Statistically, the number of abductions in Ingushetia is nearly as high as in Chechnya," said Alexander Petrov of Human Rights Watch. "Ingushetia has become no less dangerous than Chechnya in this regard."
Demonstrations in Chechnya CHECHNYA (ORChD – Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship - Information Centre). On 20 May residents of the village Chiri-Yurt in the Shalin Region of Chechnya conducted their usual protest action against the marauding of Russian servicemen. Villagers blocked the road connecting Chiri-Yurt with Shatoy, the regional centre. Similar protests have been held over the last 10 days and every time they attract more and more people.
Eyewitnesses say that on 19 May when protesters blocked the road leading to the village Noviye Atagi (Shalin Region), about 300 people took part in the demonstration. The demonstrators are demanding that federal forces return local resident Ramzan Shoipova, arbitrarily arrested during one of the routine purges of the village that took place on 8 May 2004. At around 11 pm that day, servicemen from the federal forces carried out a purge on the houses of local Chiri-Yurt residents. During the illegal search, solders beat a number of Chiri-Yurt residents including old people and young children, and 30-year-old Ramzan Musayevich Shoipov was arrested. Gold jewellery was also stolen from several residents. It is now known that during Shoipov’s detainment, members of the federal forces cruelly mocked his wife Aishat and their young children. Having tied the hands of the woman with tape, the attackers began to beat her and then tried to suffocate her. Servicemen also beat Shamil, Shoipov’s three year old son and threw an infant from its cradle onto a pile of things where it was found after the search to be hardly breathing. Having seized Shoipov, the federals drove him away in one of their cars. Shoip’s wife said that the servicemen were in several vehicles including a white Neva, two Model 7 Zhigulis, a Gazelle and a BTR armoured personnel carrier, all without number plates. To this day, nothing is known about the fate of Shoipov.
In response to the excesses committed by the federal forces and the arrest of Ramzan Shoipov, practically every day since 10 May, the residents of Chiri-Yurt have blocked the road connecting Chiri-Yurt to the village of Noviye Atagi, forcing servicemen to make a detour along the road through the village of Stariye Atagi (Grozny District). This road crosses a bridge over the river Argun, recently built by the villagers themselves from a destroyed weir. However, after several days the local residents dismantled the bridge, not wanting to allow the military vehicles of the federal forces through their village. This caused a fight between the Russian servicemen and the residents of Stariye Atagi on 17 May during which the soldiers opened fire at the feet of the residents. Translated by Sue-Ann Harding PRIMA News Agency [2004-05-20-Chech-06]
Chechens clash with Akhmad Kadyrov’s security service
CHECHNYA. (Russian-Chechen Friendship Society information centre) Residents of the town of Shali stood up to arbitrariness of the officials of the late Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov’s security service who now call themselves Akhmad Kadyrov’s Special Task Regiment. 16 May around midnight a group of the armed "Kadyrovites" broke into the home of a local resident situated in the cul-de-sac near Lenin street. The eyewitnesses who lived nearby, blocked the cul-de-sac with a KamAz trailer.
While searching the house, the attackers ripped the wallpaper off the walls and lifted up the floorboards. Having failed to find anything, they decided to leave the scene of the incident but couldn’t as the road had been blocked. The trapped "Kadyrovites" opened random fire. Once the shooting was over, the local residents gave the "Kadyrovites" an ultimatum demanding to stop random night-time attacks on private residences. After the attackers apologised for the caused damage and promised that such raids would never happen again, the locals removed the trailer from the road. In conversation with Russian-Chechen Friendship Society correspondent one of the instigators of the trap for the "Kadyrovites" stated: "We will try and prevent such unlawful raids by security services in the future during which people and their possessions go missing. And if we, ordinary Chechen citizens, continue to sit and do nothing, we will be abducted, tortured and killed. There is no law to protect us and there is nobody to complain to. All the security services without exceptions — both Chechen and Russian — practise looting, bribery, abductions and murder!" Translated by Olga Sharp PRIMA
News Agency [2004-05-21-Chech-06] |