| eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot
24/1/2006 ECHR applicants' relative tortured in Chechnya The Human Rights Centre Memorial has received information that illegal methods, including psychological pressure, beating and torture, are used in Chechnya against Mekhti Makhmudovich Mukhayev, resident in Zumsoi, temporarily resident in Ushkaloi. Mr Mukhayev was brought away from the house of his cousin Ilias Agashev in Gikalo on the night of 30 December, 2005. Two UAZ vehicles pulled over near Mr Agashev's house at around 1:00 a.m. A group of military men in camouflage uniforms and masks broke into the house. They pointed a submachine gun at Mr Agashev and began to search the house saying, "Where's Mekhti?" Finding Mekhti, they dragged him out his bed, put him on the floor, his face down, handcuffed him, took him outdoors, barefooted and in underwear, and brought him away without indicating the destination. On the second day, his relatives managed to find out that Mr Mukhayev had been delivered to Chechnya's Urus-Martan district on the same night. There, a Urus-Martan district court judge ordered to arrest him for 15 days for "disorderly conduct." After that, the detained man was delivered to the Itum-Kali District Division of Internal Affairs where he was kept for 24 hours before he was transferred to the Federal Security Service division in Chechnya's Shatoi district. A prosecutor told the relatives on 16 January that Mekhti had been transferred to the "central prosecutor's office in Grozny" at 1:00 p.m. on 11 January. Memorial workers managed to find out on 17 January that Mr Mukhayev had been transferred to the search bureau of the North Caucasus Operating Department of the Main Department of Russia's Internal Affairs Ministry in the South federal district on suspicion of committing some crimes under Part 2 of Article 209. The officer on duty at the bureau confirmed that Mr Mukhayev was there. On 18 January, Mekhti was transferred to the temporary detention isolator and a lawyer was admitted to him on 20 January. The detention statement reads that Mr Mukhayev was detained on 13 January. Before that, he had been kept at the Shatoi District Division of Internal Affairs for an administrative offence. To his lawyer, Ms Zareta Khamzatkhanova, Mr Mukhayev said that he had been tortured and beaten and subjected to psychological pressure while kept at the Shatoi DDIA and the search bureau. "After the detention, I was brought to the Itum-Kali DDIA and the next morning they took me to the town and brought into a room. There was a man, very respectable-looking, and he asked me, 'Have you drunk?' I answered, 'I don't drink.' They next put me into a car and brought me to the Shatoi DDIA. I was kept there eleven days. All these days in Shatoi, I was beaten, shown pictures, and asked if I knew those people. I answered that I did not know them, as I didn't. My head was swollen, they intimidated me, pointed weapons at me and pulled the trigger, all my internal organs hurt, and I couldn't breathe, but I gave no evidence because I had nothing to say." In eleven days, Mr Mukhayev was transferred to the search bureau in Grozny where he was tortured with electricity and beaten for three days, according to him. "I was next brought to investigator Pastukhov and I answered his questions saying that I did not know anything," Mr Mukhayev says. "After that, they brought me back and tortured again, threatened, and kept on saying that I would go missing. They said that federals had come for me and that they wanted to take me to Khankala and I would then go missing. Some Russians next came into the room and those who were torturing me told them, 'Wait a little longer,' and then told me, 'You have to say at least something, they will take you away and you will never come back home, think about your old mother, she will die if you are gone, and think about your children.' I thought that mother would really not stand if I was gone too and probably it would be better to do time than disappear, and then I said that strangers with weapons had broken into my house, demanded food, eaten, and gone away. Then they asked me, 'Who is this?' I answered that I didn't know. In the pictures, I recognised those people who are known to the folk." According to some case materials, Mr Mukhayev was detained because someone Gamayev had called Mr Mukhayev a member of his armed group. The lawyer who attended one of Mr Gamayev's interrogations claims that he was not able to stand because of beating and torture. The Human Rights Centre Memorial indicates that Mekhti Mukhayev is a close relative of applicants to the European Court of Human Rights over an abduction case in Zumsoi on 15-16 January 2005, which gives reasons to view the unlawful actions against him as an attempt at revenge or intimidation on the part of law enforcement and security agencies. eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 23/1/2006 Television discredits human rights defenders Moscow Helsinki Group Chair Liudmila Alekseyeva called statements that UK intelligence officers linked to funding NGOs in Russia a slanderous campaign against human rights defenders. On Sunday, 22 January, the Spetsialnyi Korrespondent ("Special Correspondent") programme by Arkadii Mamontov on Rossiya television channel told about an operation of Russia's Federal Security Service which had exposed a group of British spies, Marc Doe, a UK diplomat, among them, allegedly working under the cover of the embassy and contacting Russian human rights defenders. "This feature, to put it politely, is produced for illiterate and very trustful people," Liudmila Alekseyeva said. "Does Mamontov himself really think that spies still hide some microphones in some stones somewhere in the boulevard in this satellite, electronic age? Or what did they hide there, I really don't know. This is some kind of nonsense lacking respect for spectators." The feature author, according to her, "has drawn the Moscow Helsinki Group into this spy story and he has done that quite slyly, as the material does not say directly that the MHG provided spy services to Doe." "The author did not say that directly because he understands that I would sue him for that and I would succeed in this suit even in Russia where the court is not usually called independent. For that public which watches all this nonsense, the very fact that the Moscow Helsinki Group brand is mentioned in this programme is an insolent thing," Ms Alekseyeva said. "This is a loathsome slanderous campaign against human rights defenders, designed to be sweeping, not by Mamontov though. Mamontov is just doing what he is told to. And this is done on all state-run channels: there have been two features about Blagoveshchensk with slander against human rights defenders and now this one," says Liudmila Alekseyeva. "This will continue, because as far as I understand the goal of such programmes is this: prepare the public opinion for a defeat of the human rights community, the most active and the most independent part of the third sector and civil society in Russia. The idea is to stifle human rights activists and then tread down the civil society, so that everyone is silent by 2007-08 and on. And introduce astonished mankind to the Public Chamber as a dummy civil society instead of the trodden real one. This is how I see this general plan conceived by somebody very important." eng.kavkaz.memo.ru Caucasian Knot 25/1/2006 Human Rights First Condemns False Accusations against Russian Human Rights Organizations NEW YORK - The Russian government has publicly defamed four well-respected human rights organizations by accusing them of collecting funds from the British secret service. The organizations are the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Center for Democracy and Human Rights, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Nizhny-Novgorod-based Committee against Torture. All of the organizations have denied the accusations, pointing out that funds they have received from the British government have come through legal, transparent channels. Ludmilla Alexeeva, chairperson of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a renowned Soviet era dissident and recipient of Human Rights First's 2005 human rights award, characterized the allegations made in a television documentary as "a sad slander campaign against human rights defenders." She has demanded an apology from the government. "The attack on these human rights organizations are part of an escalating government campaign against independent civil society taking place in Russia today," said Maureen Byrnes, Executive Director of Human Rights First. "If the government forces these organizations to close Russia will recede further into the type of severe repression associated with the Soviet Union." Accusations such as the ones made this week could provide the government with justification to close down these vital organizations under a law governing non-governmental organizations that was signed into effect by President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. Igor Kolyapin, chairperson of the Committee against Torture, and Yuri Dzhibladze, director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights, expressed concerns that the accusations form part of a coordinated government attack on human rights organizations. The accusations are also accompanied by the prosecution under counter-extremism laws of human rights activist Stanislav Dmitrievsky, director of the Nizhny-Novgorod Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. The verdict in this case is expected on February 3, 2006. If he is convicted, it too will have a chilling effect on the activities of human rights defenders in Russia. Human Rights First is a leading human rights advocacy organization based in New York City and Washington, DC. Since 1978, we have worked in the U.S. and abroad to create a secure and humane world -advancing justice, human dignity, and respect for the rule of law. All of our activities are supported by private contributions. We accept no government funds. Visit our web site: www.humanrightsfirst.org Human Rights First 333 Seventh Ave., 13th Flr, New York, NY 10001 Tel: (212) 845-5200 Fax: (212) 845-5299 www.humanrightsfirst.org |