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Kidnapped Chechen
girl found in North Ossetia
06.08.2003
By Marina Chernysheva
NALCHIK, August 6 (Itar-Tass) - The 16-year-old Chechen girl kidnapped
in a Chechen village on Saturday was found a day later in the village
of Komarovo in the neighboring republic of North Ossetia,
a spokesman for the Russian Interior Ministry's North-Caucasian department
told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
The girl, Elza Katsayeva, was found in a police operation. She said
some unidentified people forced her out of the house on Saturday and
drove her in an unknown direction. Some time later they made her get
out of the car.
Police said that after the girl was found, she was taken to a hospital
in Mozdok from where police moved her to Nalchik [Kabardino-Balkaria
M.L.] for investigation. Elina's father and the head of the
Samashki village administration brough her back home. "She is now safe
and sound," the spokesman, Tamerlan Kazikhanov, said. Police have launched
criminal proceedings.
The girl is home safe and sound, but it remains unclear who was behind
the kidnapping, which is believed to have been meant as provocation
to destabilize the situation in breakaway Chechnya.
Following the kidnapping, 600 residents of Chechnya's village of Samashki
put up protest pickets on the federal highway running across the Achkhoi-Martan
district of Chechnya, urging the authorities to
take action to track down and detai the gunmen who on August 2 kidnapped
the sixteen-year-old girl.
Schoolgirl's abduction causes civil unrest in Chechnya
TEXT: Artyom Vernidoub
A 16-year-old girl abducted in the Chechen village of Samashki last
week, was freed on Tuesday, but who made the girl to suffer an ordeal
of abduction still remains unknown. Protesting against this act of
arbitrariness, local villagers blocked the federal motorway Rostov-Baku
for four consecutive days, allowing no vehicles to pass, regardless
of their status. The Chechens are still full of memories of Yuri Budanov's
case as well as Shamil Basayev's recent threats.
On Tuesday the vice-premier of the pro-Moscow Chechen government Movsur
Khamidov told the press that according to the Interior Minister Ali
Alkhanov, the 16-year old schoolgirl Elsa Katsayeva, abducted from her
house in the village of Samashki last Saturday, was freed and returned
home safe and sound. (some agencies gave the girl's name as Elina, but
it is not unusual that Chechens pronounce their names differently in
tongues other than their own).
"She is back, safe and sound, but we will not tell you anything more,"
an official in the Akhmad Kadyrov's administration has confirmed to
Gazeta.Ru. However at the same time the head of the Achkhoi-Martan district
administration Ali Dalnayev refuted the report. According to Dalnayev,
the hostage has not returned home.
Gazeta.Ru has learnt that at the moment of the first report the Chechen
police but determined several suspects and began negotiating the girl's
release via intermediaries. Thus, it transpired that the
republican authorities had rushed to conclude the girl was freed before
any real progress was achieved. "The journalists, most likely, have
misinterpreted [the report]," an Interior Ministry official told Gazeta.Ru.
"Unfortunately, so far we cannot confirm this information, but our people
work there. This situation is just about to be solved."
And it was solved on Wednesday morning. Final report of the girl's release
arrived at about 09-00 Moscow time. The head of the Achkhoi-Martan district
administration, Ali Dalnayev told reporters that the girl, whom he called
Elina Katsayeva, had been freed by policemen in the city of Nalchik,
in neighbouring Dagestan*. By the time of this last report the girl
was already home. The official again said that the kidnappers were unidentified
persons and gave no details of operation in which the girl Elina was
freed.
The police claim that the military are not involved in the girl's abduction,
referring to kidnappers as to `ordinary bandits'. That is why the search
is underway not at military bases but mostly in nearby woods. The village
from where the girl was abducted is situated near the well-known Samashki
forest, a known rebel hideout. Here the sides may safely swap hostages,
and names of abductors are never disclosed.
"Several directions are being worked on," police officials in Grozny
told Gazeta.Ru. "Those include the Samashki woods, the district centre
Achkhoi-Martan and other places, which cannot be named yet. Criminal
police and special-purpose police force are working on that case".
As Gazeta.Ru reported earlier Elsa Katsayeva's abduction triggered mass
protests in Samashki: about 1,000 residents, carrying placards, blocked
the federal motorway Rostov-Baku and demanded immediate release of the
girl.
Protests began on Saturday, and resumed every morning for three consecutive
days. On Monday evening local police officials managed to persuade the
furious crowd to disperse, but on Tuesday morning 300 protesters blocked
the traffic again and would not allow even military trucks and cars
with top officials to pass.
"The protesters are demanding that law-enforcement agencies stop criminals
abducting people," Achkhoi-Martanov district chief Ali Dalnayev said,
backing participants of the rally.
Citing Samashki residents, the Chechen official recounted that Elsa
was kidnapped from her house at the crack of dawn on Saturday by seven
masked gunmen dressed in camouflage uniforms. Usually in such cases
Chechens put the blame with the military. In all fairness it often happens
that federal military and Chechen police act so, violating the well-known
order on `polite cleanups'. If the officers do the searches and detentions
unmasked they may later suffer from blood feud. Anyway, many of those
detained during the night raids disappear without a trace.
In the past two months alone – since the March referendum, at
which the new Chechen constitution was adopted – 46 people went
missing in Chechnya, the Chechen Security Council secretary Rudnik Dudayev
has told the press. "Altogether, over 215 people disappeared this year.
Last year the situation was even worse," he added.
The most known of all such cases is the one of Elsa Kungayeva - another
Chechen girl who went missing at night as she was taken from own home
by Colonel Yuri Budanov. As everyone knows now, Budanov has strangled
the girl to death during interrogation and ordered his subordinates
to secretly bury her. Remarkably, Elsa Katsayeva, whose name sounds
quite similar to that of Kungayeva, was abducted several days after
Budanov was eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to 10 years.
And this is not the only suspicious coincidence.
In the wake of last Friday's suicide attack on the military hospital
in Mozdok many recalled Shamil Basayev's threats to send female suicide
bombers to Russian cities. However, only a few paid attention
to the fact that in the same statement the terrorist promised to avenge
Chechen women abducted by the federals.
Given all those coincidences, Samashki residents are not fully certain
whether it is worth suspecting the military, the rebels or some other
armed formations operating in Chechnya lately.
"Residents of Samashki do not put forward any anti-constitutional slogans
and do not stage riots," a spokesman for the Chechen Interior Ministry
Ruslan Atsayev said commenting on the situation.
"Neither federal forces nor local law enforcement agencies are involved
in Katsayeva's disappearance," to be on the safe side said the official
spokesman for the regional headquarters in charge of the counter-terrorist
operations Ilya Shabalkin.
"Abductors were wearing camouflage uniform and masks, but so far there
is no evidence on the basis of which one could conclude that those people
belong to some official structures," the vice-premier Movsar Khamidov
said.
Namely Khamidov rushed to report Katsayeva's liberation on Tuesday.
Hours later he explained that he had been misled, but refused to elaborate.
According to Khamidov, Samashki residents have cleared the Kavkaz motorway
but refuse to return to their homes before they are told who had abducted
their fellow-villager.
06 August 14:12 Gazeta ru
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*Nalchik is not in Dagestan, Nalchik, that's the capital of Kabardino-
Balkaria, approx. 100 miles to the west of Samashki.
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