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Authorities refuse to return dead fighters for burial A Russian law, little-noticed at the time of its passage in late 2002, authorizes the Russian government to retain the dead bodies of Chechen guerrillas killed by federal troops or police and considered to be terrorists. Since the law does not require the dead guerrilla to have been convicted of terrorism in court, and since in practice Moscow considers all separatist combatants to be terrorists, in effect Russia has given itself the right to treat every separatist killed in action as if he were a war criminal. In a report broadcast on June 25, independent Moscow lawyer Boris Panteleyev told Radio Liberty correspondent Jeremy Bransten: "This means that their bodies are not handed back and their place of burial is not announced. The text of the law explicitly states that this provision also applies to the bodies of terrorists not yet buried before the legislation came into effect. In other words, it is retroactive." Brantsen quoted Tanya Lokshina of the Moscow Helsinki Group as saying that the government's policy of keeping bodies violates a fundamental desire by family members for burial that cuts across cultures. Lokshina added that in the context of Chechnya, with its closely-knit kinship structures, punishing family members in this way is viewed as especially intolerable and is likely to fuel more hatred. CHECHNYA WEEKLY Volume 5 Issue 26 (Jun 30, 2004) 30.6.2004 Nazran police extract confessions from prisoners Nazran, INGUSHETIA. Refugees detained during “sweep-ups” in the camp in the village of Altiyevo on 23 June are gradually being released. All of the freed detainees have been severely beaten and all allege that they were tortured in order to extract confessions stating that they helped Chechen fighters during the night of 22 June. The freed men all expressed concern about the fate of the brothers Hizir and Aslambek Mahayev, and brothers Abu-Bakar and Salam Hasimikov. According to witnesses, the men were kept apart from other prisoners. Salam Hasimikov, who suffers from tuberculosis, was handcuffed to a radiator and severely beaten. He lost consciousness, and began to bleed from the throat, after which Salam was carried away. The released prisoners fear for his life. They also believe that all four men could face charges of assisting the fighters, having been told this by their police guards. Brothers Idris and Timerlan Ahmadov, who were released later, told how at first all the prisoners were held at the Nazran police headquarters, but they were then transferred to the building of Chechnya’s Ministry of the Interior. They were told that they were being taken to be shot. Under questioning the detainees were encouraged to admit helping the fighters who attacked a number of Ingushetia’s state institutions on the night of 22 June. Those who refused to confess were beaten up. They were also verbally abused, and were not allowed to use the toilet, being forced to urinate in their cells. Their guards told them that if they found excrement on the floor, the prisoners would be forced to eat it. On one occasion prisoners were forced to jump from the third storey. PRIMA News Agency [2004-06-28-Chech-22] eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 2/7/2004 Eighty-two Chechen residents disappear this year - Memorial Society More than eighty civilians have been missing in Chechnya since early 2004. This is what Dmitrii Grushkin, a representative of the Russian Memorial Human Rights Center, said. "One hundred and ninety-four residents have been abducted in Chechnya since early 2004, according to our information. Ninety-seven of them have been released, fifteen have been found killed and eighty-two have been missing," Grushkin said. He also reported one hundred and forty-one residents of the republic have been killed this year in Chechnya, according Memorial's information. "Sixty-seven of them were civilians, thirty-two were officers of law enforcement and security agencies and another four were representatives of the Chechen administration. Fourteen more dead bodies presumably belong to members of illegal armed formations. The bodies of another twenty-four people have not been identified," Grushkin said. Source: Memorial Human Rights Center (Moscow, Russia)