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Thursday, June 23, 2005. Issue 3193. Page 1. On the Border, A Village Uprooted by Fear By Islam Abakarov and Ruslan Salakhbekov Special to The Moscow Times Sergei Rasulov / News Team Photo: State Duma Deputy Gadzhi Makhachev speaking at a rally Tuesday, where he called for retaliation against Chechens. KIZLYAR, Dagestan -- On a clearing the size of a soccer field, more than 1,000 former residents of Borozdinovskaya, a largely ethnic Dagestani village just across the border in Chechnya, are camped out in tents amid a jumble of furniture and other belongings. They began moving here last Thursday, when they found charred human remains they suspected were those of four men taken away from their village in a June 4 raid by masked gunmen. In this makeshift camp, a few dozen meters from the checkpoint that separates Dagestan from Chechnya, the villagers are caught in the middle of a potentially explosive situation that threatens to sour already-uneasy relations between the neighboring republics as officials on both sides appear to be ready to stoke ethnic tensions. The Dagestani exodus was triggered by a raid on Borozdinovskaya late in the evening of June 4, when more than 200 masked gunmen raided the village, which is inhabited predominantly by Avars, Dagestan's biggest ethnic group, and took away 11 men. The men, 10 Dagestanis and one ethnic Russian, have not been seen since. Residents claim that the gunmen were from the Vostok, or East, special forces battalion, which is commanded by Sulim Yamadayev, a former Chechen rebel leader turned pro-Moscow strongman. The battalion is not part of the Chechen government's security forces, but answers to the General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU. But Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the 42nd motorized infantry division to which Yamadayev's militia belongs, last week denied that any of his men had participated in the raid on Borozdinovskaya. The allegations were "groundless and aimed at destabilizing the political situation and staining the honor and name of the honest career officer and Hero of Russia, Sulim Yamadayev," Surovikin said in comments on Dagestani television. The masked raiders herded about 200 Dagestani men into the village school, forced them to lie down in the mud and fired rounds over their heads, beating and insulting them, residents said. The gunmen raided homes, taking away cars and other valuables from the villagers, forcing even teenagers to empty their pockets of cell phones and cash, the villagers said. Then, they said, the attackers gunned down a 77-year-old resident of the village, set fire to three houses and fled, taking 11 villagers with them. To protest the raid, on June 8 and June 11 villagers set up roadblocks on the nearby highway separating Chechnya and Dagestan and called for the return of the missing men. Chechen and Dagestani officials met with the protesters and promised to help find the men. But last Wednesday, when a stray dog found charred human remains in one of the houses that the raiders burned down, the frightened villagers decided to pack up and leave. The raid, and the outcry against it from the villagers, has prompted Dagestanis to rally in support of the residents now camped out in Kizlyar, and has also led President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the Southern Federal District, Dmitry Kozak, to express his concern about the incident. "If what the residents of Borozdinovskaya are saying matches reality, than what was done to this village is a direct sabotage against Russia, Dagestan and Chechnya," Kozak said Wednesday on a visit to Grozny. After meeting with Kozak and relatives of the kidnapped men in Grozny on Wednesday, Chechen President Alu Alkhanov fired Khusein Nutayev, head of the Shelkovskoi district, which includes Borozdinovskaya. Nutayev last week conceded that "violations of the law" had taken place. "Regretfully, special services and federal structures have not worked that well. Those who headed the operation allowed violations of the law," he told NTV television. Mukhtar Yunusov, a disabled man who suffers from severe asthma, was among those who were kept in the school by the gunmen. "Six men raided my house on that day, beat me with rifle butts and brought me into the school yard where other villagers were already laid in the mud," he said in stumbling Russian. "They pulled my shirt over my head, forced me onto the ground and began stomping on me with their feet." Twice during the beating he lost consciousness, Yunusov said. "I served in the Soviet Army in Germany and saw Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp," Yunusov said. "But I believe these men treated us worse than in the concentration camp. The attackers said they would turn us into ashes." Ten of the 11 villagers taken away by the gunmen were ethnic Avars, mostly young men, and the 11th was a 19-year-old Kizlyar resident, an ethnic Russian who was visiting with friends in Borozdinovskaya. "According to our information, not a single law enforcement agency operating in Chechnya has any of these 11 men in detention," Magomedrasul Isayev, deputy head of the Kizlyar region, said Monday. "I believe that they are either being kept in a private basement or have been killed." "Most probably, the kidnapped people were not taken anywhere but killed right there," said Borozdinovskaya resident Magomed Magomedov, adding that the remains of what appeared to be four people were collected by villagers and passed to Chechen officials for forensic examination. The villagers say that the raiders arrived in Borozdinovskaya in armored personnel carriers, a form of military hardware used by Yamadayev's men in their operations in eastern Chechnya. Some villagers said that they recognized Yamadayev's head of intelligence, Khamzat Gairbekov, a Chechen resident of Borozdinovskaya, among the attackers. "Every stray dog here knows this cockroach," said Nazarbek Magomedov, whose two sons were taken away by the raiders, referring to Gairbekov. "Many of us recognized him and reported this to investigators from the Military Prosecutor's Office. But the investigators left the village and tossed away the complaints we filed in a field." Yamadayev and his four brothers actively fought against Russian troops during the 1994-96 Chechen war. After the war ended, the Yamadayevs, along with Akhmad Kadyrov, the future Chechen president, based themselves in Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city, and refused to submit to the authority of Chechnya's separatist president, Aslan Maskhadov, or his rival, Shamil Basayev. In 1999, the Yamadayevs switched sides and joined federal troops as they advanced into Chechnya from Dagestan. Since then, they have been active in fighting the rebels. Yamadayev's brother, Ruslan, a State Duma deputy from Chechnya, has vowed in an interview with the Dagestani newspaper Chernovik that his brother had nothing to do with the raid. The chairman of Dagestan's Security Council, Akhmednabi Magdigadzhiyev, said Tuesday in televised remarks that the raiders were part of a federal militia that was not answerable to the Chechen government. He refrained, however, from naming the unit or commander responsible for the raid. In the exodus from Borozdinovskaya last Thursday, relatives came from Dagestan on trucks, and more vehicles were rented in nearby Kizlyar to relocate the angry Dagestanis. The trucks shuttled between the village and a clearing just across the highway that divides the Kizlyar plains into Dagestan and Chechnya. A total of 210 families, including 387 men, 413 women and 272 children, had moved there as of Monday afternoon, said Isayev, the Kizlyar official. With only a few battered tents provided by the local authorities in Kizlyar, the camp makes for an eerie sight: Among the tents are refrigerators and wardrobes, beds and television sets, most of them covered by plastic sheeting. After the villagers arrived, they built two outhouses out of planks on the outskirts of the camp. Villagers have brought piles of construction materials to the camp from Borozdinovskaya, an indication that they do not plan to return. "We will destroy our houses in Borozdinovskaya; we will burn them so that nothing will be left for the Chechens," said one villager, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal. On Tuesday, Borozdinovskaya residents and ethnic Avar politicians from Dagestan held a rally near the tent camp. A State Duma member from Dagestan, Gadzhi Makhachev, called at the rally for the eviction of ethnic Chechens from Dagestan in retribution, but other Dagestani officials and Borozdinovskaya residents did not support him in his call. The meeting adopted a declaration demanding that the Chechen government compensate Borozdinovskaya residents for their abandoned houses, and calling on the Dagestani government to give the villagers land to settle on. If their demands were not met, the villagers said they would go to the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala, and rally in front of government buildings. Tensions have run high between the Chechens and Dagestanis living in Chechnya since the early 1990s. Many Dagestanis and ethnic Russians, who had been made to settle on Chechen lands after Josef Stalin exiled the Chechens to Kazakhstan in 1944, found themselves forcibly evicted, this time by the Chechens. But in Borozdinovskaya, where the Avars were in the majority, local Avar strongman Shapi Mikatov created an armed militia that effectively protected the village from the Chechen gangs, the residents said. The strongest clashes Mikatov had were with Sulim Yamadayev, who was the most powerful rebel warlord in eastern Chechnya during its de facto independence in 1991-94 and 1996-99. After Mikatov was killed in a shootout in 1998, the Dagestani residents of Borozdinovskaya began to be targeted by pro-Moscow Chechen police and militias. Residents recall kidnappings for ransom, beating and insults at hands of Chechen officials. They increasingly turned to Dagestani authorities to help them to relocate to Dagestan, but were flatly denied any support, they said. Since the setting up of the tent camp in Kizlyar, Magdigadzhiyev, the Dagestani security official, has said the villagers' place is in their home village, not in Dagestan. "They are citizens of Chechnya and must live where their homes are," he said, insisting that there was no conflict between the Chechens and Dagestanis living in Chechnya. But many of the villagers believe their Chechen neighbors played a part in the June 4 raid, possibly by telling Yamadayev's men that Dagestanis were hiding weapons or rebel fighters in their homes. The Dagestanis accuse Chechens of wanting to clear them out of the village, in the same way that many Russian families were pressured to leave villages in northern Chechnya. "These men told us that next time our children will suffer if we don't leave. This is our land, they kept saying," Borozdinovskaya resident Aminat Magomedova said, recalling the day of the raid. "The worst thing is that the children saw this. They saw how our houses were set on fire, how people were beaten and insulted. They are still very scared." Another villager, Shamil Magomedov, said that Chechens from other places had been coming to Borozdinovskaya for three weeks before the raid, and said they had already occupied many houses abandoned by Dagestanis. "They knew this would happen, it was a planned action," he said, adding that Chechen policemen were not allowing the Dagestanis leaving the village to take construction materials with them. "The usually busy road to Dagestan was clear when we began moving our belongings out, there was nothing to block our departure," said another villager, who refused to give his name. Chechen President Fires Local Leader After Military Operation 22.06.2005 MosNews Chechen president Alu Alkhanov fired the head of the Shelkovsky district administration Hussein Nutaev after the scandal of a “mopping up” operation carried out in the Chechen village of Borozdinovskaya. “I have just signed an order for Nutaev’s dismissal after the events in the Borozdinovskaya village, and I am going to do the same with every top official who allowed the banditry in Borozdinovskaya to happen,” Alkhanov was quoted by Interfax as saying. Units of the Russian Federation armed forces carried out the special operation in the village of Borozdinovskaya on June 4 in which four homes were burnt down, one person was killed and 11 disappeared. Secretary of the Dagestan Security Council Akhmednabi Magdigadzhiyev said that the Dagestan leadership would do all it could to bring the offenders to justice. “We have already spoken to the Ministry of Defence, the president’s official representative in the Southern Federal District and the president of the Chechen Republic. If the specific circumstances are not made clear very soon, we will go to the Russian president,” Magdigadzhiyev said. More than 2,000 people took part in a rally in the Kizlyarskiy district of neighboring Dagestan organized by Russian MP Gadzhi Makhachev calling on the authorities to investigate the incident in the village quickly and thoroughly, and asking the Dagestani authorities to support those who fled the village, Interfax reported. Jun 22 2005 5:47PM Events in Borozdinovskaya unlawful - Alkhanov GROZNY. June 22 (Interfax) - Chechen President Alu Alkhanov has called the recent events in the Chechen village of Borozdinovskaya a cruel, unlawful attack. "The citizens of Borozdinovskaya were cruelly attacked, and it was the most flagrant violation of the law," Alkhanov said after meeting with citizens of Borodzinovskaya, which he visited together with presidential envoy in the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak. "The participants at the meeting expressed a wish to be relocated to Dagestan. We have been living together for centuries; we have a lot in common. And the bastards who committed the disorders in Borodzinovskaya were aiming to sow discord," Alkhanov said. "I asked the people to do all they can to prevent discord. We all have to find a way out of this situation. I have no doubts that we can do so," Alkhanov said. Prosecutor General's office opens kidnapping investigation in Chechnya GROZNY, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Prosecutor-General's Office has opened an investigation into the disappearance of 11 people following a special operation in a village in Chechnya. Nikolai Khazikov, the head of the investigation, told a news conference at Severny airport in the Chechen capital, Grozny, that a case had been opened into kidnapping and extortion following events in the village of Borozdinovskaya, northeastern Chechnya, on June 4. As a result of a special operation, 11 people were abducted and transported to an unknown location. Their fate remains unclear. According to Khazikov, investigators have been looking for clues since the first day after the incident. He denied media rumors that the remains of the abducted people had been found. "We do not possess such information, and the investigation is not aware that any human remains have been found," he said. Residents of Borozdinovskaya, which is in the Shelkovskoy district of Chechnya, arrived at Severny airport to meet with Dmitry Kozak, the Russian president's envoy in the Southern Federal District. He intends to get the witness accounts of what happened in the village. 80 % of refugees waiting for a political refuge in Lithuania are Chechens About three thousand foreigners, basically Chechens, have asked for a political asylum in Lithuania since 1997, when the Convention on the status of refugees was approved in the country. Such statistics was adduced on Monday in the Ministry of Social Protection and Work of Lithuania. According to the Ministry, for this period the status of a political refugee has been given to 79 people. This year Lithuania has spent already about 156,5 thousands of euro for supporting of refugees, the “Newsru” informs. It is also informed, that international legal experts do not recommend the Chechen refugees to come back to their native land occupied by Russia . Chechenpress, 23.06.05 http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/06/23/07.shtml eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 15/6/2005 Deceived and forgotten The dwellers of a temporary accommodation point for forced migrants in Grozny complain of hard living conditions and a shortage of food. An extremely difficult situation is taking shape in the temporary accommodation point for Chechen refugees in Mayakovskogo in Grozny's Staropromyslovskii district. The refugees complain of an acute shortage of food and a number of other problems. "No humanitarian aid has been handed out to us for a long time already. One can say we are on the verge of hunger, as we have no income sources, no jobs," Maret, a 38-year-old dweller of the temporary accommodation point, told Caucasian Knot. "The living conditions here are much worse than those we had when we lived in tents in Ingushetia. At least humanitarian aid was given there regularly." Maret says there are other problems, above those with food. "Water is brought here in road tankers, but it is impossible to drink it because it smells of diesel oil. Children are often ill, the sewerage system is inoperative and we are afraid of an outbreak of infectious diseases, but no one cares about our problems. When we lived in Ingushetia, everyone invited us home, tried to persuade us, promised normal living conditions, assistance, compensations. But once the people came back, they were forgotten," she believes. Officials at the Migration Service Department of Chechnya's Internal Affairs Ministry claim the problem with supplies of humanitarian aid to temporary accommodation points for internally displaced people are linked with its absence in warehouses. "Humanitarian aide for internally displaced people first comes to warehouses in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. They are currently empty. But we are told foodstuffs will be brought there in the next few days. At the beginning of next week, we will start handing out humanitarian aid to forced migrants and set off the existing arrears," an officer with the Migration Service Department says. Author: Sultan Abubakarov, CK correspondent eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 15/6/2005 Girl stabs father's torturer An 18-year-old girl stabbed a Chechen law enforcement agent who was beating her aged father in Prigorodnoye not far from Grozny on 13 June, a local resident told Caucasian Knot. "The agents were looking for the old man's son, but he was not in, so one of them began to beat the father cruelly in the presence of his 18-year-old daughter, demanding that he should say where his son was. Unable to stand the violence over her father, the girl grabbed a table knife and stabbed the torturer in the heart, after which the others ran away taking the body of their man," a 42-year-old villager says. "But yesterday in the morning (14 June) they came back and demanded that the girl's relatives should give her up saying their friend had died. The girl now has to hide, too, but even so she and her father and their other relatives are in danger," thinks the interlocutor. He refused to give her name saying it was her relatives' request. The in the morning on 14 June, law enforcement agents abducted a young man in Prigorodnoye. The guy's aged neighbour who was watching the developments died of a heart attack on the spot. Chechnya's Internal Affairs Ministry declined comment concerning what had happened in Prigorodnoye saying police officers had nothing to do with the developments there. Local residents believe the agents were members of Chechnya's presidential security service. For several weeks Russian chastisers kidnapped and killed 15 young women The Informational Centre of the SNO informs that according to incomplete data, for several weeks in the territory of the Chechen Republic Russian terrorists and their helpers detained, kidnapped and killed 15 young women. According to the available information, in the beginning of May an inhabitant of the village Starye Atagi Astamirova was kidnapped in Johar. On the 4 th of May, in the evening in the Zavodskoi region of Johar R. Kadyrov's gangsters stopped a car "Zhiguli". Having taken out a passenger from it, an inhabitant of the Urus-Martan region, gangsters took her away in an unknown direction. 22-years Leila Umarova was missing in the village Nizhniye Noibera of the Gudermes region. On the 5 th of May, in the Staropromyslovskiy region of Johar, a young woman was kidnapped in the 7 th Line Street . This very day in the village Syuzhi of the Shatoi region bandits from puppet structures in the territory of the ChRI detained and took away the mother of 4 small children 40-years, Zura Israpilova. In the village Podgornoye a young girl, who worked as a nurse in the local hospital, left for work and did not return. On the 8 th of May, in the regional centre Urus-Martan, during the so-called "cleanings", carried out by employees of retaliatory structures a 27-years local inhabitant was detained. Her further destiny is unknown till now. At night of the 9 th of May, in the Staropromyslovskiy region of Johar armed gangsters in camouflage violently took in an unknown direction a local inhabitant, Jaha Idigova, from her own apartment. On the 15 th of May, in the village Gvardeiskoye of the Nadterechnyy region 24-years old Yaha Idrisova was missing. On the 22 nd of May, at the railway station of Johar puppets kidnapped an employee of the "Business center" Hamsat Agaeva, going to the Russian city Rostov-na-Donu. On the 26 th of May, in the Avtorhanovskiy region of the capital 17-years old local inhabitant Aminat Tasueva left her house and did not return. At night on the 30 th of May, in Gudermes Russian gangs killed local inhabitant Lyuba Natsaeva. On the 31 st of May, in the Staropromyslovskiy region of Johar 14-years old local inhabitant Madina Saihanova was missing. On the 4 th of June, in the Zavodskoi region of Johar local residents found the corpse of an unknown young woman, killed with a shot at her head. The killed is not identified. On the 9 th of June, in the village Darban-Hi of the Gudermes region of the Chechen Republic the body of a 25-years old young woman was found at the roadside of a motorway. The unknown girl was shot from small arms. Chechenpress, 23.06.05 http://www.chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/06/23/12.shtml