| PPosted: AFP, 12 June 2005 1912 hrs Fifteen hurt as Chechnya train derails; Russia calls it 'terrorism' MOSCOW : A passenger train travelling from the rebel republic of Chechnya to Moscow derailed after an explosion, in what Russian officials said was an act of terrorism that slightly injured dozens of people on board. "This was a terrorist attack," Alexei Panteleyev, the deputy governor of the Moscow region, was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency hours after the incident, which coincided with the annual national independence day holiday in Russia. There were no reported fatalities but five people were hospitalized with injuries and 37 others sought medical attention after five cars jumped the tracks near the town of Uzunovo about 150 kilometers (93 miles) southeast of Moscow, according to Russian media reports. None of the reported injuries was life-threatening. Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Savchenko said an investigation had been opened for suspected "terrorism and attempted murder of two or more people." There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, and police said they were searching the nearby area for the perpetrator. Most of the injured were treated at the scene and released while the remaining passengers boarded another train and continued their journey to Moscow. A spokeswoman for the FSB security service said the train's conductor reported seeing an explosion on the tracks ahead of him seconds before the train derailed. Investigators also found evidence, including electric cables wired to one of the rails and a location beside the tracks where the "supposed criminal" hid before detonating the blast, indicating that the blast was set off deliberately, she said. The train was travelling at a slow speed when the derailment occurred and Echo Moskvi radio said the conductor had time to apply the brakes after he saw the explosion and before the cars jumped the tracks. "It all happened very quickly," an unidentified elderly woman who was aboard the train said in an interview with the NTV television network. "There was a loud noise. I didn't know what was happening." The blast had a force equivalent to three kilograms of TNT and left a crater about one meter (three feet) wide on the path of the railway, officials said. Investigators from several federal agencies including the FSB, the interior ministry and the emergency situations ministry travelled to the scene and Savchenko said they checked the surrounding area to verify that no other explosive devices had been planted nearby. The derailment came amid heightened fears that Chechen rebels may carry out more attacks during the summer holiday season. A senior law enforcement official said last Wednesday that security was being stepped up at airports, train stations and other public sites under measures to prevent acts of terrorism and other crimes during the summer. Those measures included stationing of police officers with special training in profiling criminal suspects based on behavioral and physical traits, First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying. Russian troops have been fighting separatist rebel forces in Chechnya for the past five and a half years, the second war Russia has fought in Chechnya in the past decade. Chechen rebels have in the past claimed responsibility for attacks on Russian transport facilities, including the simultaneous downing last August of two passenger jets followed a week later by a suicide bomb attack outside a busy Moscow metro station. eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 10/6/2005 Justice unwelcome Applicants to the European Court of Human Rights are again killed in Chechnya. Local residents found the mutilated body of an unknown man on the outskirts of Iliinskaia, Grozny district, on 8 May 2005. The dead man was later confirmed as Said-Hussein Elmurzayev, resident in Duba-Yurt, Shali district, one of the few residents of the republic who have lodged a complaint with the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights. Said-Hussein Elmurzayev and his son Suleiman were brought away from their home in Duba-Yurt on the night of 2 April 2005 by armed people in camouflage uniforms. Their relatives have since tried to find them. Said-Hussein and Suleiman applied to the European Court of Human Rights after Russian military men had brought away and killed Said-Hussein's other son, Idris Elmurzayev, in March 2004. The young man's body with marks of cruel torture was found on 9 April 2004. Said-Hussein's relatives believe it is the complaint that caused his son's and his abduction and further extrajudicial execution. Local public and human rights organisations agree with that. "Said-Hussein Elmurzayev is not the first applicant to the Strasbourg court who has fallen victim to extrajudicial execution on the part of the military. His execution is nothing but a political killing and open intimidation of people who might have planned applying to Strasbourg with a complaint about the abuse of the Russian military and local law enforcement and security agencies," a human rights activist said. This is not the first case of killing Chechen citizens who have dared to complain to the European Court of Human Rights. "In June 2002, Russian military men brought away a local resident, Said-Magomed Imakayev, during a 'clean-up' in Novye Atagi, Shali district. He has since been missing. A few months before, his wife Maret and he had lodged a complaint with the Strasbourg court. The ground for the complaint was that the military had abducted their 23-year-old son, Said-Hussein Imakayev, on 17 December 2000. Said-Magomed and his son have since been missing," the activist said. Another fact of extrajudicial execution of an applicant to the European Court of Human Rights was registered in May 2003. Officers of Russian law enforcement and security agencies killed local residents Ramzan Iduyev, his son Idris, wife Zura Bitiyev, and her brother Abubakar Bitiyev in Kalinovskaia, Naurskaia district, on 21 May 2003. They all were shot dead at home in Filatov St by servicemen in masks. Zura Bitiyev had lodged a complaint with the Strasbourg court in April 2000 because in January 2000 she had been detained and kept in the Chernokozovo, Naurskaia district, filtration camp where she had been subjected to cruel torture and inhuman treatment. Zura Bitiyev was well-known in the republic as a civil society figure and an anti-war movement activist. After her cruel execution, her relatives abandoned attempts to seek justice in the European Court of Human Rights. There is information though that the same decision has been made by the relatives of the Imakayevs and Said-Hussein Elmurzayev. eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 11/6/2005 Numbers exaggerated? More than 25,000 Russian military men have been killed in action or died of wounds in Chechnya since 1999, according to the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers. No official comment has been made on these figures as yet. There are 700 graves of Russian soldiers and officers in Chechnya, Valentina Melnikov, Secretary-in-Office of the Committee and Chairman of the United People's Party of Soldiers' Mothers, told Caucasian Knot. "There are maps where these graves are marked and there is a federal law that says funds must be allocated to search for and exhume our children. All this is assigned to the command of the 58th army, but nothing is carried out," Melnikov emphasised. The Russian Defence Ministry, Federal Security Service and Internal Affairs Ministry which is currently responsible for the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya just called the above figure "exaggerated." Chechenpress "Mothers of Beslan" have ceased the hunger-strike and go to Moscow for continuation of the action Parents of the children, who were lost at the storm of the school in Beslan by retaliatory special services of the Russian Federation, ceased the three-day hunger-strike on Thursday. They protested against the appointing of Teimuraz Mamsurov as the head of the Northern Ossetia. The action was carried out in Vladikavkaz and was organized by the "Committee of mothers of Beslan". It proceeded for exactly so much, as much the hostages were in the captured school. Mamsurov replaced Alexander Dzasohov at the post of the head of Northern Ossetia, the resignation of whom relatives of victims tried to achieve after the tragedy in Beslan, the RS informs. "Gazeta. Ru" informs that in the nearest future a group of the North Ossetic women, who lost children during the Beslan storm, will arrive to Moscow to organize in the Russian capital a protest action and to express their attitude to the dictatorial politician Putin. 13.06.05 http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/06/13/08.shtml "Chechen orphans receive 'training' through the programs of their parents' murderers" Jun 13, 2005 13 June: A Daymohk news agency source has reported that hundreds of Chechen children, whose parents were killed by Russian occupiers during acts of genocide against the Chechen people, are held in horrible conditions in hurriedly-built children's rehabilitation centres, "boarding guests houses" and other children's homes and shelters. Already, this is the second wartime generation orphaned by two wars and raised by the occupying regime. The generation of those orphaned by the first Russian-Chechen war has already grown up, as more than 11 years have already passed. After the first war, Chechens and foreign philanthropists started to build boarding schools for orphans in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Some shelter employees were sacked for bullying children. The punitive system of the occupying regime has now also touched children whose parents were killed by the regime itself. The source reports that the occupying regime has prepared special programmes meant to turn Chechen children into "zombies" who will be used against their own people. They are handed over to the so-called "Suvorov" schools where feelings are known to run high. In frequent trips around Russia, children are subjected to experiments and bullying. Children are held in unsanitary conditions and starved and they have people who would make perfect wardens in a strict regime "red" colony [where rules are set by prison administration] for "teachers". But, thank God, Chechen society with its sense of morality and duty, patriarchal traditions is still unshaken by the occupiers' misanthropic system, and even distant relatives do not give orphans away into enemies' hands. We should recall that tens of thousands of Chechen children have been killed by occupiers over the past 10 years, and 25 per cent of the entire people (250,000) have been killed to quench Russia's imperial hunger. Source: Daymohk news agency web site, in Russian 13 Jun 05 BBC Mon TCU 130605 gc/ea --------------------------------------------------------------------- The original story in Russian: http://www.daymohk.org/cgi-bin/orsi3/index.cgi?id=13658 |