| Caucasus
Reporting Service Chechnya: New Year, New Brutality The new year begins with an upsurge of violence and abductions. By Umalt Dudayev in Grozny (CRS No. 269, 12-Jan-05) On January 4, members of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow presidential security service – or “Kadyrovtsy” as they are more commonly known – supported by Russian federal soldiers, surrounded a series of villages in the Achkhoi-Martan region in the west of the republic and carried out the brutal search operations known as “clean-ups.” All the villagers in Valerik and Kotar-Yurt were made to show their documents and many houses were forcibly searched. The operation was led by deputy prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov, son of former Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov after whom the presidential unit is named. In Kotar-Yurt, several locals were detained and have since disappeared. One of them, Aslan Gairbekov, had recently returned from Russia. Another man, a 27-year old with the surname Yamlikhanov, had reportedly fought in the first Chechen conflict of 1994-96 and been officially amnestied, but this did not save him from being taken away by the Kadyrovtsy. “In our village several Russian soldiers came into houses and demanded food,” said Aziz Muradov from Valerik. “They said that they had eaten nothing for two days. They said they were carrying out a ‘clean-up’ operation because they had information that [separatist president] Aslan Maskhadov had spent the night there with his guards. But we don’t know anything about that.” The pro-Moscow forces say that winter is the most favourable time for them to go on the offensive. “Experience shows that with the onset of winter many members of bandit groups leave their bases in the mountains, come back to their villages, and try to melt into the local population,” said Alexei Matyukhin, a captain with the FSB intelligence service in Chechnya. “For our part, we use information we receive and other methods to identify and neutralise the bandits who come down from the mountains for a winter break. The local population is tired of the bandit lawlessness, and that helps us find the bandits.” Matyukhin said that other rebel fighters take refuge in the neighbouring republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia. He cited as a success a federal operation on January 8 when a group of guerrillas was killed in the Ingush city of Nazran. The rebels admit that winter is the hardest time for them. “In winter the intensity of fighting goes down to almost zero, because when autumn starts it is much harder for us to move around and keep hidden,” said 37-year-old Ramzan, commander of a rebel group that was recently operating in south-western Chechnya. “It’s practically impossible to keep a lot of people in bases in the mountains in winter. Besides, the Russians are constantly bombing and shelling the mountain regions.” Ramzan said that the rebel side was also suffering as a consequence of denunciations by informers, who tell the pro-Moscow authorities about the presence of insurgents in their midst. “We lose even more of our comrades from these ‘special operations’ and ‘clean-ups’ than we do during all the fighting in the spring, summer and autumn,” he said. Many believe that the upsurge in brutality, especially on the part of the Kadyrovtsy, stems from their ambition finally to track down Maskhadov and radical Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, both of whom have operated freely in Chechnya for more than five years since the start of the second Chechen conflict in 1999. On January 2, more than two dozen Kadyrovtsy made a raid on a house in the Proletarskoye suburb of Grozny and detained 23-year-old Zaurbek Gaziev, father of two small children. “Around 25-30 men in camouflage burst in at three in the morning, and opened fire on my husband and gravely wounded him,” wrote Gaziev’s wife Liza in a statement to the human rights organisation Memorial. “They interrogated him on the spot for around three hours without giving him any medical help, even though he was losing blood. When I tried to go to my husband one of them seized me by the hair, shoved me up against a wall and didn’t let me near him any more.” “They did not let any of the neighbours in, and when I tried to take my two children, aged one and two-and-a-half, who were in a state of shock, over to the neighbours they told me, ‘You can all kick the bucket together.’ At around 6 am, they finished searching the house, and took away gold, clothes, the telephone and other things. “When I asked them where they were taking him they told me it was none of my business… The people who took Zaurbek were all Chechens and their leader was called Mukhtar.” Gazieva said that her husband was now under guard in hospital in the Nozhai-Yurt region of south-eastern Chechnya. His relatives have not been allowed to see him, he does not have a lawyer, and no criminal charges have been laid against him. Memorial says that since New Year, 11 people have been murdered and 32 abducted in Grozny alone, and that almost all the abductions were carried out by armed men in military uniforms. Mairbek, a 43-year-old Grozny resident who did not want his surname to be given said that people were being tortured into giving confessions. “The first question they ask their victims is where Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev are. And I know this not only from friends and acquaintances who have fallen into the clutches of the Kadyrovtsy or the Russians, but from my own bitter experience.” In December, Mairbek spent three days in a basement being tortured by the Kadyrovtsy. “First they demanded that I should tell them where Maskhadov and Basayev are hiding,” he said. “Then they ordered me to give the names and addresses of fighters or [radical Islamist] Wahhabis that I know. They gave me electric shocks, beat me with an iron rod, hung me up with handcuffs, beat and kicked me and did not allow me to sleep, eat or drink.” “These are the methods they use to get a confession. It’s not important to them whose name you give, or whether the person is a fighter, a Wahhabi or just a drug addict. The main thing is just to get a new victim, so that through him they learn something substantial.” The wave of arrests has spread fear throughout Chechnya, but the people who are most afraid are the relatives of well-known rebel leaders. A month ago, armed men in masks and camouflage gear driving unmarked vehicles seized the sister and two brothers of Maskhadov - all of them over 70 years old. Mairbek said he thought the abductions were designed as an ultimatum to force the rebel leader to surrender. He added, “Apparently Maskhadov replied that even if the Russians or local strongmen take all his family hostage or even his whole teip [Chechen clan] he will carry on fighting.” Murad Nashkhoyev, a historian and political analyst commented gloomily, “For me the most frightening thing about all this business is that they are forcing Chechens to destroy one another, they are forcing us to hate one another. They are forcing an ‘Afghan’ scenario on us, whose consequences for our people will be simply awful.” Umalt Dudayev is the pseudonym of a Chechen journalist and IWPR contributor. http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/cau/cau_200501_269_1_eng.txt http://www.ng.ru/regions/2005-01-12/4_btr.html (my quick tr) # 1 (3397) 12 January 2005. Kidnappers arrive on BTRs[*] The new wave of kidnappings of innocent civilians has arrived in Chechnya Andrey Riskin Just after the New Year, a wave of abductions arrived in Chechnya. Three inhabitants of the republic were abducted on Monday. In all these incidents, people in camouflage uniform were breaking in into the houses and taking away their residents in the unknown direction. A day before two inhabitants of Grozny and also inhabitants of Shali and the village of Znamenskoye have been kidnapped. On the 7th of January in Grozny, the soloist of Chechen Vainakh national ensemble Ibragim Khamuradov was abducted. According to official data, eight people have disappeared just this year in the republic . A conference of the leaders of law-enforcement agencies of the southern federal district, where siloviki of Chechnya reported about their work on preventing kidnappings took place on the eve of New Year in Nalchik. As stated the chief for the Attorney General's Office in the North Caucasus Anatoliy Arsentev, in 2004, from 398 people who have disappeared in the district [okrug], 205 have disappeared in Chechnya. The official has acknowledged that from 129 cases reported in the first quarter of past year, in 94 cases the kidnappers used BTRs. And the attorney of Chechnya Vladimir Kravchenko reported, that recently his department "in essence works for the European Human Rights Court", where 80 similar complaints from the inhabitants of republic are being examined at this moment. Meanwhile, according to the data of Memorial human rights center in the past year in Chechnya 396 local residents have been kidnapped, from whom 175 are considered as disappeared without a trace. In this case, as asserts Memorial's representative - Dmitriy Grushkin, the workers of this organization could follow observance of human rights only on 30% of the territory of the republic, with having no access to the mountain districts of Chechnya: "Therefore, the real scale of crimes against the population could be several times higher". ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.army-technology.com/projects/btr80/btr802.html [*] Photo of BTR-80 [BroneTransportioR] wheeled Armoured Personel Carrier Former Russian Military Cadet Behind Spate of Terrorist Attacks Created: 13.01.2005 15:22 MSK MosNews Several terrorist attacks that took place in Russia last year were committed by a group led by a former Russian military cadet, Pavel Kosolapov, the Vremya Novostei newspaper wrote, citing Russian special services. [http://www.vremya.ru/2005/2/51/116029.html "Kosolapov's track" by Aleksand Shvarev] His group was found to be involved in explosions in the Moscow metro, at gas pipelines and on power lines in the Moscow region, as well as at bus stations in the city of Voronezh, and at a market in Samara. Kosolapov has also reportedly taken part in combat operations against Russian troops in Chechnya, the paper wrote. Earlier, he was dismissed from a military college in the Rostov region of southern Russia. Explosive devices similar to those used in the terrorist attacks were found in Kosolapov's apartment in March 2004. The former cadet was also suspected of links to terrorists who seized the building of the Nord Ost theater in Moscow in November 2002. It was Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev who ordered Kosolapov (due to the latter's appearance being distinctly unlike a native of the Caucasus region) to create a group to commit terrorist attacks in Russia, the paper wrote. Among Kosolapov's accomplices were two people from Kazakhstan who were later detained in the Central Asian republic in connection with a terrorist attack in Samara in June 2004. One of them, Yerkingali Taizhanov, hanged himself in jail. Russia recently asked Kazakhstan to extradite the second man, Azamat Toleubai, but Kazakhstan has so far refused. Kosolapov was put on the wanted list back in spring of last year, but he has yet to be found. 42 people were killed in an explosion in the Moscow metro on Feb. 6 last year. On Feb. 19, two people were wounded in an explosion near a bus stop in Voronezh. At the end of the same month, four gas pipelines were blown up near Moscow. On March 15, bombs were planted under a power line near Moscow. Two attacks were committed at Voronezh bus stops on June 19 and 26, with one person being killed. 11 people were killed in a blast at a Samara market on June 4. Russian Rights Group Confirms Abduction of Maskhadov Relatives Created: 13.01.2005 11:31 MSK MosNews Eight elderly relatives of the Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov were abducted in December by republican security forces, commanded by pro-Moscow deputy prime minister of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, recently awarded the Hero of Russia by Vladimir Putin, the human rights group Memorial said in a letter, received by NEWSru.com. [http://www.newsru.com/russia/13jan2005/mashadov.htm] Memorial activists said they had met people who witnessed the abductions. According to their accounts, Aslan Maskhadov's sister Buchu Abdulkadyrova, born 1937, was detained in Grozny and taken away by local security officers on Dec. 3, 2004. On the same day unidentified gunmen, allegedly reporting to Ramzan Kadyrov, kidnapped Maskhadov's brother Lecha, born 1936. Adam Rashiyev, a distant relative of the separatist leader, disappeared on the same evening in Grozny. Also, on Dec. 3 Lema Maskhadov, 55, was kidnapped from his home in Grozny. Before taking him away, security officers searched his apartment without producing a warrant. Maskhadov's nephew Ikhvan Magomedov, 35, was abducted from his house near Grozny. On Dec. 28 Maskhadov's niece Khadizhat Satuyeva and two sons-in-law Usman Satuyev and Movladi were kidnapped. Rights activists said that relatives of the abducted people did not file any official complaints to republican law enforcement authorities. On Jan. 12 the whereabouts of all those people was still unknown. However, according to some reports, they are being held at a remand prison in Tsentoroi, Kadyrovs' native village in the Gudermes disrict of the republic. There, witnesses claim, an illegal prison was established where Ramzan Kadyrov's fighters keep their detainees. Earlier this week Chechen separatist leaders addressed the European Parliament in a letter claiming that several elderly relatives of separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov had been abducted in Grozny by federal forces or pro-Moscow Chechen forces. Jan 13 2005 5:21PM Detention of Maskhadov's relatives denied MOSCOW. Jan 13 (Interfax) - Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov has denied reports that the republic's law enforcement agencies allegedly detained relatives of Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov. "These reports are not true," Kadyrov told Interfax by phone on Thursday. "Acting on my instruction, various law enforcement agencies carried out a detailed check and established that neither Interior Ministry bodies nor any other agencies had received letters from relatives of the aforementioned people reporting their abduction," he said. Kadyrov offered his comments in response to a press release circulated by the Memorial human rights center in Moscow on Wednesday evening that eight of Maskhadov's relatives had been detained by Chechen law enforcement agencies on December 3-28, 2004. They include Maskhadov's two brothers, sister and nephew, the release says. Illegal FSB Armed Search of the Offices of the Council of Non-governmental Organizations (SNO) in Nazran, Ingushetia Vienna, 13 January 2004. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) strongly protests the 12 January 2005 operation of a group of armed men claiming to belong to the Ingush branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in the premises of the Press Center of the Council of Non-governmental Organizations (SNO), an umbrella organization of Chechen NGOs, which is situated in a private apartment in Nazran, Ingushetia. Details: On 12 January 2005 at around 14:00 several men in camouflage and masks, claiming to be members of the Ingush branch of the FSB, armed with sub-machine guns and shields, broke into the premises of the SNO on Nazran's Moskovskaya Street. At the time, seven people were in the Press Center – four staff-members and three visitors, including a female minor. They acted in a manner typical for a "mop-up operation" (zachistka). Not only the journalists and their guests suffered verbal insults, but all the males were forced to lie down on the floor and the females had to stand against a wall. Holding everyone at gunpoint, pending the arrival of an investigator, the FSB servicemen checked and photographed their identification documents. The statute documents of SNO were also photographed. The FSB went through all desk drawers and cabinets in the Press-Center, including those in the kitchen, and threw all papers and other objects to the floor. They also tore the wire of the office phone. They never explained their actions or produced a search warrant. An investigator stating to be from the FSB Directorate for the Republic of Ingushetia, who showed up later on, claimed that the operation in the Press Center was being carried out on the basis of intelligence information that a group of bandits was occupying that apartment. The FSB personnel took away two of the Press Center's computers, allegedly also for checking, and told the Chair of the SNO, Taisa Isaeva, that she could come to the main office of the FSB in Magas and pick them up on the following day. No protocol was filled out in connection with the seizure of the computers. On January 13 in the morning, Taisa Isaeva received a phone call from the FSB in Magas. She was told that the checking of the SNO computers was not completed yet and she would be informed of further development. SNO's Press Center publishes information about human rights violations in the Chechen Republic and in the Republic of Ingushetia. It has been operating for almost three years to date. This mop-up operation appears to be part of an increasing campaign of intimidating monitoring organisations using the anti-terror campaign as a cover. The IHF is deeply concerned about this action against human rights defenders carried out by the FSB in violation of relevant Russian law and international human rights standards. For further information: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Aaron Rhodes, Eliza Moussaeva, Tel. +43-1-408 88 22; in Moscow: Tanya Lokshina, Tel +7-095-208 1765 Human Rights Center ‘Memorial’, Nazran office, Tel. +7-873-2222 349 __________________________________________ Joachim Frank, Project Coordinator International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights Wickenburggasse 14/7 A-1080 Vienna Tel. +43-1-408 88 22 ext. 22 Fax: +43-1-408 88 22 ext. 50 Web: http://www.ihf-hr.org ______________________________________ The Chechen Times 13.01.2005 Chechnya: New Year, old style Abductions, robberies, executions… Channels reporting the TV-truth on the topic of Chechnya to the population demonstrate either an endless victorious liquidation of “international terrorists,” or something sugary: a competition of servicemen, soldiers bring a Christmas tree to a kindergarten… And all that isn’t a lie, but the truth for a narrow circle of users: peaceful mise en scenes are only for a limited group. For the overwhelming majority in Chechnya the reality is different: the same cruel and bloody [war]. The war which began in 1999 – is still going on. And it seems the New Year of 2005 has been marked by a record high number of abductions of locals whose mutilated bodies are later thrown out in village outskirts, cleaning up operations, round-ups, robberies… Below – is a short chronicle. The record of the New Year fit of the chronic disease. January 5. Hassan Azigov, the former head of the Zavodskoy district of Grozny, was abducted. The Kadyrovtsy openly did it. Azigov is being kept in one of their illegal prisons and is demanded to accept a job for Kadyrov Jr. January 4. Large-scale cleaning up operations in the villages of Kotar-Yurt and Valerik (the Achkhoy-Martan district). They were conducted jointly by the Kadyrovtsy and federals. The villages were blocked for more than 14 hours. Many detainees. On January 5 all of them except for two detainees, the future fate of who has remained unknown, were thrown out of vehicles in the Gudermes district. January 3. Said-Ali Iriskhanov, the former head of the administration in Zakan-Yurt (the Achkhoy-Martan district), abducted by unknown people about three weeks before that, died as a result of beating in an illegal prison of the Kadyrovtsy… The bodies of three unidentified men with numerous signs of a forced death were discovered in the outskirts of the settlement of Khambi-Irze (the Achkhoy-Martan district)… The body of an 18 year old boy from the settlement of Mairtup (the Kurchaloy district), abducted several days before that from his own house by the Kadyrovtsy and kept in an illegal prison in Tsentoroy (the Gudermes district), was found in the outskirts of Shali. The victim had never fought… December 28. Unidentified masked people in camouflage abducted Sulumbek Idagov, a prominent lawyer, from his own house in Grozny. December 27. The Kadyrovtsy abducted Islam Zukhairayev, 34, from his own house in the settlement of Serzhen-Yurt (the Shali district). He was kept in an illegal prison. They executed his in the New Year night. He had never fought… December 26. The body of Adam Shovlakhov with execution signs was discovered in the outskirts of Shali. Three days prior to that unidentified people in camouflage abducted him together with his brother Khalid from his own house. In the beginning of the war he joined the Resistance but later gave it up and was amnestied. The fate of Khalid has remained unknown… December 25. Unidentified federals abducted all men of the family of Khatatayevs in the settlement of Chechen-Aul (the Grozny selski district). The fate has remained unknown… In Dagestan’s Khasavyurt five Kadyrovits (members of inner security of Chechen “MVD”) broke into a house, threatened the hostess with weapons and took her mobile phone. When their bandit vehicle was stopped, two young girls were in it: one of them from Kizil-Yurt, another girl – from Makhachkala. It turned out the bandits visited the roadside “Tehran” cafe and forced them into the vehicle. There was an arsenal of weapons in the vehicle. December 23. A 23 year old widow, whose husband had fought against federals and died, was abducted in the night from her house in Vedeno by unidentified federals. The next night the same federals tried to abduct two of her small children, but the family sounded the alarm – and the visitors left. The next morning the children were taken out of Chechnya… Etc. People are hinting after people. The modern style oprichnina. And now think about it: can you live like that?! Silence. A complete silence of the surrounding world. Chechnya has never enjoyed the country’s attention – we mean, just to sympathize. But now our silence is no longer a sign of consent. This is a salute. Our common “hail.” Anna Politkovskaya / Novaya Gazeta http://www.chechentimes.org/en/comments/?id=25168 |