Kadyrov defends Chechens from Le Monde

Gazeta.Ru 

Each month over 100 Chechens become victims of extrajudicial  executions. Many are killed with explosives tied to their bodies. At  least this is what the French newspaper Le Monde alleged in an  article published on April 11, which claimed the head of the pro- Moscow Chechen administration Akhmad Kadyrov had sent Vladimir Putin  a secret report on crimes against civilians in Chechnya. Kadyrov has  bluntly denied the allegation, saying that ''no such report exists''.

As the Moscow correspondent of Le Monde, Natalie Nougayrede, wrote in her article, at the end of March the head of the Moscow-installed  Chechen administration Akhmad Kadyrov submitted a special secret  report on cases of extrajudicial killings of Chechens by the Russian  military. The report was sent ''to the highest federal level''.

In its article Le Monde cites a section entitled ''Information on  murders committed on the territory of Chechnya in the period of January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2002'', in which the Chechen authorities officially inform of 1,314 cases of murders committed against civilians in the year 2002 alone.

Those deaths did not occur during armed clashes, or as a result of artillery raids, bombings or terror attacks, writes Le Monde, but were the result of mass executions by Russian troops.

On average, according to the report cited by Le Monde, each month 109 Chechens are murdered, which is double the estimates of the Russian human rights group Memorial keeping track of military crimes in Chechnya.

Furthermore, in the report cited by the French journalist, the Chechen authorities for the first time officially admit the existence of numerous mass graves in the republic. The section entitled ''Data concerning mass burials of civilians on the territory of the Chechen Republic, gathered by the Ministry of the Chechen Republic for Emergency Situations'' contains a list of 49 settlements with the number of dead bodies retrieved from common graves in each of them.

For instance, according to the report cited by Le Monde, 260 bodies were discovered in a mass grave at the central cemetery of Grozny. The remains of another 43 civilians were exhumed from a grave near the Khankala military base. 35 bodies were retrieved in the village of Alkhan-Kala, 17 in the Proletarsky settlement, 22 in the village of Aldy near Grozny… Altogether, the remains of 2,879 civilians were discovered in mass graves.

Another section of the report enumerates dozens of cases of ''murders'', ''corpses bearing traces of violent death'', ''fragments of bodies'' (many victims were tied up and killed with explosives – a method reportedly used by Russian troops over the past 18 months), as well as of ''abduction'', ''torture'', and ''beating'' of peaceful civilians.

On the basis on the leaked report the author of the article claims that notwithstanding Russia's official assertions that the situation in Chechnya is returning to normal, the federal troops continue to commit crimes in the republic, making it a territory with mass graves all over the place, where nothing has improved over the past months.

Having familiarized himself with the Le Monde article our correspondent has detected many coincidences between it and earlier publications concerning uninvestigated crimes in Chechnya.

First and foremost, this concerns the letter of Akhmad Kadyrov to Vladimir Putin, dated late November 2002, in which the Chechen official drew the president's attention to ''mass abductions of civilians, committed by the military with the use of armoured personnel carriers late at night'', as well as to ''mass cases of
looting on the part of military servicemen''.

Besides, it is common knowledge that the Chechen administration and heads of district administrations throughout the republic accurately gather data on disappearances during security sweeps, night raids, and other `non-combat' operations.

By the end of March those lists, indeed, contained nearly 2,800 names. But they are not those of the bodies discovered in mass graves (currently being investigated by the Chechen prosecutor's office), but namely the lists of Chechen residents who disappeared and whose relatives have reported their disappearance to the authorities.

Gazeta.Ru asked the Kremlin to comment on the Le Monde publication. Alexander Machevsky of Sergey Yastrzhembsky's office, in a conversation with Gazeta.Ru, refused to confirm that the document cited by Le Monde exists, saying that ''the [presidential] administration has no information regarding this document''.

Akhmad Kadyrov proved much more forthright in his comments on the publication. In a statement released on Monday he said that ''no such report [as cited by Le Monde] exists''. Kadyrov refuted the publication as ''lies, an attempt to distort, with the help of a newspaper canard, the real situation in Chechnya, which is normalizing after the referendum'' on the republic's constitution.

Russia's Prosecutor's Office, too, on Monday denied Le Monde's speculation about the mass murders and extrajudicial executions of civilians in Chechnya. Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky told Interfax he did not know anything about the secret report on civilian casualties prepared by the Chechen administration.

''As for the figures mentioned by Le Monde, we're talking about clearly biased data selection,'' he said. Civilian casualties in Chechnya may include people who died as a result of terrorist attacks, particularly those killed as a result of a recent bus explosion, he said. ''It is just absurd when they say that over 100 civilians died as a result of extrajudicial executions in Chechnya each month,'' Fridinsky said.

He said that 156 murders have been registered in Chechnya in the past three months, which is much fewer than the figures reported in western media. Concerning the crime situation in Chechnya, Fridinsky said that the total number of crimes in the republic decreased by 14% in the past three months. The number of extremely grave crimes decreased by 4.5% and grave crimes fell by 51%. The number of attempted murders decreased by 11% and the number of unresolved murders fell by 6%.

''Unfortunately, the number of kidnappings, including by rebel groups, has not decreased yet,'' Fridinsky said. He admitted that graves are periodically found in Chechnya and that their age varies from several days to several years. ''Many of the bodies have not been identified yet as not all the tests have been conducted and it is too early to say whether these people were civilians or not,'' he said.