CHECHEN REPUBLIC OF ICHKERIA MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

URGENT STATEMENT OF THE CHECHEN FOREIGN MINISTER:

CRIMFA: Russians kidnapped 16 relatives of Chechen Minister of health Dr. Oumar Khanbiev. The worls must tell Putin to free them.

8 March 2004

Last week Russian security services and the Kremlin-backed Kadyrov’s criminal administration, in a series of separate operations in Benoi, Grozny and elsewhere in Chechnya, selectively kidnapped 16 relatives of Chechen Minister of Health Dr. Oumar Khanbiev. The Russian authorities then announced to the locals that the detainees would “be tortured to death” if Oumar Khanbiev and his brother Magomed Khanbiev do not “surrender” to Russians.

This mass and politically motivated kidnapping is a barbaric act of a state sponsored terrorism aimed to silence Chechen legitimate political leadership, which the world must immediately condemn in the strongest possible terms and take urgent actions to guarantee safe and speedy release of the all 16 kidnapped civilians.

In February 2000, Oumar Khanbiev, together with 18 members of his medical staff and 75 wounded patients, was illegally detained and subjected to torture in Russian concentration camps. He was freed weeks latter only as a combined result of an international pressure and ransom.

Since then Oumar Khanbiev has become Chechen key political representative in Europe and has done a tremendous job in increasing European and international public and political awareness about the situation in Chechnya and searching for a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Chechen conflict. In December 2000, European Parliamentarians, in recognition of his important work on behalf of the innocent victims of the Russian war in Chechnya, awarded Dr. Khanbiev with “Passport for Freedom”.

On 4 September 2002, apparently in an attempt to silence Dr. Khanbiev, Russian security services kidnapped his younger brother – civilian doctor Ali Khanbiev, whose fate, despite of the concerns raised by members of the European Parliament and the European Commission, is still unknown. Now, the masters of Kremlin and their local puppets kidnapped almost every relative of Oumar Khanbiev.

This crime comes only two weeks after Russian agents committed a terrorist attack in Qatar that killed former acting Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and severely injured his 13-year-old son. Now we have another crime of an open terror. It must not be allowed to succeed.

The United States of America, the states of the free Europe, the European Union, the United Nations, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and all human rights organizations must do no less than to demand from President Putin today to release the kidnapped civilians, to release them immediately.

Ilyas AkhmadovForeign Minister

March 8, 2004

www.chechnya-mfa.info

7.03.2004

All people who were outside their tents at the moment were detained. In spite of the early morning hours, there were many people out because it was the morning prayer time.

Then the searches were carried out all over the camp. According to the refugees, the soldiers were entering tents and checking document, claiming that they were looking for guerrillas and weapons.

«They were keeping one girl only in plain cloths on the street during the search," said camp resident Malika Tovsultanova, whose 5-year-old daughter was so frightened that she almost fainted.

One of the two local policemen who tried to stand up for the refugees was even beaten.

A total of 17 people were taken to a bus parking behind the camp. According to one of them, Ruslan Dzhamsayev, they were told that their documents need to be checked with the help of a computer. «However, there was no computer. On the bus there was a man who was just observing us carefully," said Dzhamsayev.

Later on, the detained men had to be released under the pressure of the women who came to save their husbands.

The search ended at about 10 a.m. And already in the middle of the day Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of the special Russian presidential human rights commission, departed from Moscow by air to find out about the incident.

Pamfilova said that today’s search at Satsita was a result of the wilfulness of the local officials. «Such order could not have come from above," she said.

According to Chechen human rights defenders, the search had no specific goal. «It was elementary intimidation aimed at forcing people to leave the camp. And it was carried out according to an already traditional scenario," stated Ruslan Badalov, chairman of human rights organization Chechen National Salvation Committee.

Timur Aliyev/Prague Watchdog

<>8.03.2004

A terrible murder of a resident of Roshni-Tchu village

On March 3, 2004, the Muradovs found the corpse of their 30-year-old relative Khamsat Muradov, a resident of Roshni-Tchu village, Urus-Martan district of the Chechen Republic. Unidentified people abducted Khamsat from his own house at night of February 21, 2004. They dragged him away in an unknown direction.

Muradov’s relatives being shocked by the terrible crime couldn’t clearly tell a reporter of the Information Center at the Society for the Russian-Chechen Friendship where they had found the corpse. Nevertheless, they told that the body had borne clear signs of torture. One of his relatives, Zaynap Salingarova, told that before the abduction of Muradov unknown people had threatened him for two weeks.

He appealed to the Ministry of Interior Affairs of the Chechen Republic and to the public prosecutor’s office but all to no avail. The law-enforcement bodies of the Chechen Republic did nothing to secure his safety.

SRChF

March 8, 2004

Chechen Refugees Stay Away From Russia

By YURI BAGROV, Associated Press Writer

NAZRAN, Russia — Every night, four Chechen refugees go to bed in a garage they share with the owner's Mercedes. The Kirkhersayev family pays $50 a month to stay there and say they would rather live in these conditions than return to war-shattered Chechnya.

Many of the tens of thousands of other Chechen refugees in the neighboring Ingushetia region of Russia are also hesitating to go back even as pressure on them grows to return to the republic the Russians say is stabilizing.

Russian authorities have begun to close down refugee tent camps. One was shut down late last month and officials say the other two could be gone by the end of March.

More than 200,000 Chechen refugees lived in Ingushetia in the worst days of the war, which began in fall 1999 and was at its height in its first year.

Officials say tens of thousands of refugees have returned to Chechnya, and others have gone elsewhere, but some 50,000-60,000 are still there, including some 3,000 refugees in the two tent camps heavily funded by international agencies.

Officials say no refugees will be forced to return to Chechnya, whose border lies about half a mile east of the sprawling, muddy tent compounds. However, their options are grim.

Like the Kikhersayevs, they can seek what's generally called "private accommodation" -- a resident's spare room or makeshift quarters of questionable legality. The Kikhersayevs have installed an unapproved heater and water pipes.

Or they can look for a spot in the so-called "temporary settlements," usually derelict factories or collective farms where the buildings have been sectioned off into small cubicles. The buildings are more vulnerable to fire than the tents of the refugee camps, aid workers say.

But for Liz Salgiriyeva, 45, who lives in a settlement at a former dairy farm, it's preferable to Chechnya.

"I wouldn't return to Chechnya for anything," said Salgiriyeva, whose hand was amputated after she was injured in the 1999 siege of the Chechen capital Grozny.

"First of all, it's horrible there, secondly, my home's been destroyed. But the main thing is that I'm afraid for my son: they'll take him in the first 'mopping-up'," she said, referring to Russian soldiers' rounding up of young men to try to weed out rebels and their supporters.

Chechens and human rights groups say that countless young men seized in these operations have disappeared and that others are beaten and terrorized before being released.

Akhmed Kirkhersayev said he'd rather stay in the garage than return to Chechnya because of the two weeks he spent in the notorious Chernikozovo detention camp there. Human rights advocates say the camp's detainees were systematically beaten.

The tent camps are a sign that refugees don't trust Russian assurances that it's safe to return home.

Over the past month, conditions in the camps have been made increasingly difficult: water deliveries were cut, gas and electricity supplies have been sporadic and the school in at least one camp was closed.

"Who profits from our children being uneducated?" asked Luiza Khatukayeva, a resident of the Satsita camp. "They didn't even let them finish the school year."

Aid workers say such measures may live up to the letter of authorities' promises not to force back refugees, but are cruel all the same.

You can't speak, specifically, of force or the physical removal of refugees from the camps, but psychological pressure certainly is being used," said Tina Vagapova of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees regional office.

"Every day, the heads of Chechen regions and local representatives come here trying to convince people to return. Closing the schools, turning off water, gas and electricity can only be seen as pressure."

Russian authorities are also trying to lure refugees back with promises of good temporary accommodation in Chechnya and compensation payments for rebuilding their wrecked homes.

But temporary facilities visited last month in Grozny were cramped and shabby. Even promoters of returning acknowledge their unattractiveness.

Ella Pamfilova, President Vladimir Putin's human rights aide, said this month that returning refugees faced "quite a favorable situation," but added "there are problems with the water supplies and a spate of other problems," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

http://www.ng.ru/regions/2004-03-05/4_dagestan.html (tr. by M.L.)

Nezavisimaya Gazeta #45 (3160) March 5, 2004

"Zachistka" - in Daghstani style

Acts of terror against the representatives of all branches of authority have been continueing in the republic

by Andrei Riskin

Head of Administration of the Buynaksk district of the republic Magomedrasul Alkhlayev was killed in Dagestan yesterday. His car was fired upon from some other car which was passing it.   Earlier in Khasavyurt, at daytime, unknown people opened fire on a service-duty Niva jeep of the deputy chief of city department of FSB Saidmukhmad Umarov. The officer has been hospitalized with a bullet wound to his back.

Recently reports about acts of terror began to come from Daghestan almost with the same frequency as from Chechnya. Let us note that recently in the Tsumadin district has been destroyed Ruslan Gelayev - one of the leaders of Chechen illegal armed unit [bandformirovaniye]. And although the border detail bumped onto the fighter completely by chance (in this case those border-guards also had perished), the representatives of security ministries stated that Gelayev was killed as a result of thoroughly planned operation. That means  that in the mountains, a special operation is being conducted, and fighters [boyeviks] without any special fear commit acts of terror here. Meanwhile Gelayev, whose gang was destroyed in the Tsumadin district already in December, by the acknowledgement of Minister of Defense of the RF Sergei Ivanov was hiding himself precisely here all this time.

As far as Alkhlayev's case is concerned, this hasn't been the first attempt on life of the representatives of authority in Daghestan lately. In September 2003, head of the Kizilyurt district Abdurakhman Gadzhiyev was shot. Doctors were barely able to save his life. In November, in Makhachkala there was an attempt to blow up a car of the chief  administration for combatting extremism and criminal terrorism of the MVD of Daghestan Magomed Magomedov. On the 31st of January of this year unknown people wounded a deputy of the People's Assembly of the republic Nadir Alakhkuliyev shooting him from a pistol. Now similarly, they have reached the federal special services' representatives.

"In Daghestan, all these years with impunity they have been killing whom they want and as they want -  stated to NG - chairman of the Peoples' Assembly of Russia senator Ramazan Abdulatipov - and nothing happens to anyone there. They've killed a minister, deputy, attorney,  no longer anyone counts the rest. Because the best method of competiton in Daghestan - that's the murder of a competitor. They say like this here: The man wants somewhere to work, and the authorities tells him: "Listen, that person's still alive. Everything is understood by all".

However, as Abdulatipov assumes "this is not even a battle for power, as the authority there - is not a normal one". Simply in the absence of democratic practice of solving of various questions it was explained that: "today, the most available solution to some problem - that's a murder?. "The federal structures" - emphasizes the senator - all these years have been observinge how they kill people in Dagestan. As a result of this they have got also to them. If you do not search for a killer, but you want to make a cent [kopeck] on this, then the result is, that they will begin to shoot at you too".

With Abdulatipov agrees the Deputy of the Gosduma from Daghestan - Gadzhi Nukhachev, who survived the assassination attempt on himself. "The laws do not work in Dagestan - stated Nukhachev to NG. "The nation lives for itself, - the authority also for itself. Members of police do not handle this growth of bandit groups, criminality. Because they are all occupied with protecting of the officials of different branches of authority, their children, wives.

Thousands of times I asked, to meet with a represetative of the FSB... But he told me nothing intelligible. Thousands of times the country's leadership was asked to focus its attention on Daghestan. No one pays any attention. So, "zachistka" has already began, moreover its peak is [vperedi] ahead (in the future). During winter fighters and Wahhabis have been staying in Daghestan, they hide in the mountains here. If this is going to continue, then we will lose Daghestan. The Federal Center must study close the republic, send a high commission here, to understand these acts of terror - who is behind them. But the Center is not giving to the events in Daghestan a proper attention. The nation senses that it is forgotten and neglected. It is possible to create what you want and whom you want to kill, there's no responsibility here. Therefore bespredel is going on.".