MOSCOW - A top official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government said Thursday
that prosecutors had investigated hundreds of kidnapping cases involving
Russian troops last year, but said the figures were "nothing out of the
ordinary."
Chechen Prime Minister Anatoly Popov said he was not familiar with a report by
Human Rights Watch, claiming that 1,123 civilians were killed last year. The New
York-based organization said 70 civilians were killed and more than 100 disappeared
in the first two months of 2003.
Popov said a report by Chechen prosecutors showed more than 500 kidnapping cases
in 2002, including 300 believed to have been committed by servicemen.
"Yes, there are crimes, there are kidnappings, and some of them involve servicemen,"
he said at a news conference. "There's nothing out of the ordinary in that report."
Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said 720 murders were registered and
565 kidnapping cases were opened, according to the Interfax news agency.
He said a report in the French newspaper Le Monde claiming the bodies of nearly
3,000 people had been found in mass graves in Chechnya was vastly inflated. To
get such a figure, "every murdered person would have had to die five times," he
said in remarks broadcast on TVS television. Le Monde did not say over what period
the alleged victims had died.
Human rights groups say most civilians who disappear are killed, so Fridinsky's
figures did not directly contradict Human Rights Watch's claims.
Fridinsky said 156 murders took place in the first three months of 2003.
Meanwhile, Chechnya's deputy prime minister, Movsar Khamidov, denied reports that
three teenagers who were found dead on the outskirts of the capital Grozny
this week had been kidnapped by soldiers. He said they had been killed by a land
mine, according to Interfax.
Russian officials touted a referendum in Chechnya last month as a path to peace.
Voters overwhelmingly approved a new constitution binding Chechnya to Russia,
but rights groups criticized holding a plebiscite while war continued.
Four Russian servicemen were killed and 11 others wounded in Chechnya over the
previous 24 hours, a Chechen administration official said on condition of anonymity.
Separately, two Russian police officers were killed and four wounded when a rocket-propelled
grenade hit their truck in Grozny, emergency officials said.
Popov said the situation in the region had improved since the referendum,
"Six months ago, the streets were empty after dark. Now it gets dark, and public
transportation is still running, people are going about their affairs," he said.
But Rudnik Dudayev, chief of Chechnya's security council, said the situation had
worsened and that 26 people had disappeared since the vote, according to Interfax.
The Russian human rights group Memorial says people typically disappear after
they are detained by Russian forces, and that their corpses later turn up in mass
graves.