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Memorial: Some
details about from life of Moscow suicide women bombers
http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/msg/2003/07/m4665.htm (quick
translation by M.L.)
05/07/03
After the terrorist act in Moscow, the media reported, that one of the
shaheeds - Zulikhan Elikhadzhiyeva, born in 1983, was a native of the
village of Kurchaloi of the Chechen republic.
As became known to the PTS "Memorial", Zulikhan Elikhadzhiyeva actually
lived in Kurchaloi on the Rechnaya street. Zulikhan is the daughter
of Solt-Akhmed Elikhadzhiyev, born in 1956, from the second
marriage. From the first marriage with Mechtayeva, Solt-Ahmet had son
Magomed and a daughter. Magomed is being searched as a participant in
armed formations of the CHRI.
On the 21st of September 2001 at 4.00 AM military servicemen surrounded
the house of Said-Magomed Mechtayev -75 years old grandfather of Magomed
Solt-Akhmedovich along the maternal line. Magomed with his wife lived
in the house of his grandfather but on that day he wasn't there - in
the house some boyeviks stayed. There was shootout between members of
the armed formations of the CHRI and servicemen. As a result of it,
there were victims on both sides. Then, in the Mechtayev's house they
found a hiding-place with weapons. Detained were, 20 yrs old wife of
Magomed and the men from the adjacent houses; - four Ibragimovs and
three Abubakarovs. After
the special-operation had ended, the employees of the Russian security
services mined and exploded the house.
After several days those detained men were let go. According to those
detained, they all had been tortured. Magomed's wife security services
men (siloviki) held practically for a month. According to some eyewitnesses,
she was kept in many different places, most often in military motor
vehicles on the territory of the commendatura (local FSB HQ is located
there). For her relatives it was possible to free her after paying the
ransom of 12 automatic machine guns.
After this incident in the Mechtayevs and Elikhadzhiyevs houses employees
of security services periodically arranged searches and pogroms. The
Mechtayevs were forced to leave this house. In the house remained only
Said-Magomed Mechtayev. In the fall of 2002 employees of the Kurchaloi
FSB detained Said-Magomed Mechtayev from a maintenance shop, where he
worked as a watchman (janitor). Nothing has been known since then about
his fate and whereabouts. Approximately a month after the detention
of this old man, some fragments of two human bodies - man and woman,
torn by an explosion were found on the northern outskirts of Kurchaloi.
Remains were buried unidentified, but in the village, they considered
that those remains of the man's body, most likely, belonged to
Said-Magomed Mechtayev.
On the 28th of October of 2002, two days after the assault on the theatrical
center at Dubrovka in Moscow, FSB employees mined and exploded
the empty two-story house of Muslim Mechtayev - son of Said- Magomed
(Muslim already for several years has been living in Tyumen -Siberia).
The children of Solt-Akhmed Elikhadzhiyev, because of the constant interest
from the side of FSB in this family, had been forced to go to
strange houses, fearing to stay in their own house.
In the middle of June of 2003 Zulikhan Elikhadzhiyeva left her house
with two unknown women. After this, no one of her relatives saw
her and knew about her whereabouts.
On the 5 of July of 2003 on the spot of terrorist act in the vicinity
of Tushino airfield in Moscow, on a body of one of the shakhids
some documents on the name of Zulikhan Elikhadzhiyeva were found.
During the same day, at 6.30 PM, to the Kurchaloi ROVD
on an APC and UAZ- 452 motor vehicle arrived members of
Kurchaloi FSB. They went visit the passport-visa office, found
form No. 1 of Zulikhan Elikhadzhiyeva and went to the house
of her parents, there were followed by some employees of
Kurchaloi ROVD with the district prosecutor of this region Yu.
Din.
In the house of Elikhadzhiyevs those employees of security services
stayed till 10 PM, and when departing, they took with them Zulikhan's
father, Solt-Akhmed Elikhadzhiyev and 63 yrs old Zulikhan's
grandmother. Late at night they were both let go. On the 6th of July
again they were brought for interrogation. After that interrogation
they were let go again.
Information of the representation PTS "Memorial" in Nazran.
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http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/msg/2003/07/m4668.htm
12.07.03
On the 7th of July in Moscow, employees of security services during
the attempt to conduct terrorist act detained Zarema Muzhukhoyeva,
inhabitant of stanitsa Assinovskaya of the Chechen Sunzha district .
On the 12th of July employees of the PTS "Memorial" visited Zarema Muzhukhoyeva's
relatives, who live in stanitsa Assinovskaya at the 48th Bakin
street. From their words became known some facts of Z. Muzhukhoyeva's
biography.
Zarema Muzhukhoyeva, 23 years old, before the war had married Khashiyev,
inhabitant of the village of Galashki (Ingushetiia). Her husband
in the beginning of 1999 was killed on a blockpost (checkpoint)
by the Ingush policemen (circumstances of this incident are still
unknown). After this Zarema Muzhukhoyeva (Khashiyeva) had moved to stanitsa
Assinovskaya into the house to her grandfather (father and mother of
Zarema have died long ago) - Khamzat Muzhukhoyev, who lives at
that address pointed out above, where also her aunts live (sisters
of her father). From the marriage with Khashiyev Zarema has 3
yrs old daughter.
In the beginning of May of 2003 Zarema Muzhukhoyeva collected her things
and has left home. The relatives were trying to find her, but searches
had not brought any results. Whereabouts of Zarema
Muzhukhoyeva hadn't been known for a long time
Note. The Muzhukhoyevs are Ingushes, they belong to the Ortskhoy-Merzhoy
teip, migrants from the village of Bamut.
Information of the representation of PTS "Memorial" in Nazran.
Female suicide bombers unnerve Russians
The New York Times August 7, 2003
Female Suicide Bombers Unnerve Russians
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
KURCHALOI, Russia, Aug. 3 Zulikhan Yelikhadzhiyeva lived much
of her short life surrounded by the horrors of the two wars in Chechnya,
but she suffered comparatively little.
She lived in a cloistered brick house in this small Chechen village,
which has largely escaped war's worst ravages. She studied at the village's
medical vocational school and interned at its local clinic.
Little seems to explain why a month ago, accompanied by another woman,
she approached the entrance to a music festival in Moscow and blew herself
up. The blast killed only her, but the other woman detonated her own
suicide bomb moments later, killing at least 16 people. Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva
was 20.
In the last four months, seven suicide attacks, all but one of them
carried out by women, have spread fear across Russia, killing 165 people
in all and setting in motion a new dynamic in the four-year-old war
against Chechen secessionists.
Russian news media, echoing officials, have dubbed the perpetrators
"black widows," women prepared to kill and to die to avenge the deaths
of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons at the hands of Russian troops
in the current war or the one in the 1990's.
But Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva identified, officials said, by a passport
found at the scene does not fit such a description. Here in
Chechnya, truth is elusive and what, precisely, drives these women,
and how they are recruited, seem murky. Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva had no dead
father, husband, brother or son to motivate her.
The suicide attacks by women have particularly unnerved the Russian
authorities, in part because Chechen women had been able to move more
freely than Chechen men, who are routinely harassed by Russia's police
and security services.
The only recent attack not carried out by a woman was the truck bombing
of a military hospital inMozdok on Friday, which left 50 dead at last
count.
In Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's case, neither the authorities nor those who
knew her could say exactly what compelled her to blow herself up. In
February she disappeared in circumstances that remain mysterious.
Her grandmother, Zuda Khasukhanova, said she had been kidnapped on the
orders of her half-brother. The authorities said she joined one of Chechnya's
rebel groups.
She had not married. According to her grandmother and a neighbor who
knew her all her life, she displayed little interest in the radical
Islamic ideology that has increasingly characterized Chechnya's separatist
fighters. She planned to continue studying medicine.
"We had such a good family," Ms. Khasukhanova said in an interview,
punctuated with tears, in the house where she had lived with her granddaughter.
"She was like an angel."
Imran Yezhiyev, the head of the Society of Chechen-Russian Friendship,
an advocacy group in the region of Ingushetia, on Chechnya's western
boundary, said in a telephone interview that the suicide attacks were
an inevitable response to the "most crude, the most terrible" crimes
Russian forces had committed against Chechen civilians during the war.
"They are desperate because they see no prospect of this horrible war
ending," he said of the suicide bombers.
At the same time, though, he said he and other elders had denounced
the tactic as anathema to Chechen traditions of honor.
Most Chechens, in fact, have not embraced a cult of martyrdom, as have,
for example, Palestinian suicide bombers in the Gaza Strip and the West
Bank. In Kurchaloi there are no posters or graffiti
celebrating Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's suicide. Those interviewed here in
Chechnya professed shock and horror.
"How can a person who kills somebody get to heaven?" said her grandmother,
who is 63. "It's horrible what's going on in Chechnya right now."
Russian officials, who bristle at any suggestion that abuses by Russian
forces could have inspired any of the suicide attacks, have blamed the
influence of Islamic fundamentalists, including foreign groups associated
with international terrorism.
Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir V. Putin's senior adviser
on Chechnya, suggested in an interview published in the weekly newspaper
Sobesednik last month that Islamic extremists had co-opted the "black
widows" against their will to become suicide bombers.
"Chechens are turning these young girls into zombies using psychotropic
drugs," Mr. Yastrzhembsky said. "I have heard that they rape them and
record the rapes on video. After that, such Chechen girls have no chance
at all of resuming a normal life in Chechnya. They have only one option:
to blow themselves up with a bomb full of nails and ball bearings."
Mr. Yastrzhembsky and other officials have provided scant evidence of
links to international terrorism. They seem to know little about how
the suicide attacks have been planned, organized and carried out.
According to some reports, there may be as many 36 "black widows." Last
month Russia's deputy prosecutor general, Sergei N. Fridinsky, said
the suicide bombers were being trained inside and outside Chechnya,
but he did not elaborate.
The Russian authorities have now expanded their arbitrary security checks
to woman dressed in scarves or other clothing characteristic of Chechnya's
Muslim majority, prompting the country's largest Muslim organization
to warn of "religious and racial apartheid."
Prosecutors' greatest lead came with the arrest of Zarema Muzhikhoyeva,
a 22-year-old Chechen who was arrested after trying unsuccessfully to
detonate a bomb at a cafe on Tverskaya on the night
of July 9.
Her husband is reported to have died, but in a car accident, not in
the struggle against Russian forces. She also reportedly has an infant
daughter.
The newspaper Kommersant, citing unidentified investigators, reported
last month that Ms. Muzhikhoyeva arrived in Moscow from Nazran, the
capital of Ingushetia, a week before the attempted bombing.
She was met by a Chechen woman named Lyuba and dubbed Black
Fatima in news reports, after a common Chechen name who provided
her with the explosives and plied her with orange juice that made her
disoriented, suggesting that she had been drugged, the newspaper said.
Officials said her arrest led to the discovery of a cache of suicide
bombs in a small village on Moscow's outskirts on July 24, but they
have so far announced no arrests of accomplices. A spokesman for the
prosecutor general's office declined to discuss the investigation into
her case or that of Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva.
Kurchaloi is a village of 10,000 about 18 miles east of Chechnya's capital,
Grozny. The roads into it are blocked by bleak checkpoints manned by
Russian and Chechen soldiers. Its streets are gutted and dusty, but
the village has not been the center of the fierce fighting that has
reduced cities like Grozny to apocalyptic ruins.
Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva lived with her father, Suleiman, her mother and
a younger sister and younger brother, said her grandmother, Ms. Khasukhanova.
None, she said, were involved in Chechnya's separatist conflicts.
Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's father, she said, lived on a disability pension
and had a 21-year-old son, Danilkhan, from a first marriage that ended
in divorce soon after he was born.
Their relationship was estranged, and the son drifted into the fundamentalist
branch of Islam known as Wahhabism, which has made inroads into Chechnya
from Saudi Arabia.
The grandmother said Russian forces entered the village last November
to arrest a cell of what she called Arab fighters who were living in
two houses on the same street. The houses were destroyed.
She said Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's father had been detained for questioning
for 24 hours, beaten by interrogators and then released.
Afterward he fled with his wife and youngest son, living in a refugee
camp in Ingushetia, though he returned on occasion. Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva
remained, with her younger sister, Iman.
Nothing is known about what happened to Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva after she
disappeared in February. Ms. Khasukhanova explained that she had been
abducted on the orders of her half-brother, Danilkhan, and driven away
in a white car with a man and two other women.
A spokesman for Chechnya's interior ministry, Ruslan Atsayev, said in
a telephone interview that the authorities had been informed of her
disappearance but concluded that she had left voluntarily.
He added that Danilkhan was known as a separatist guerrilla who went
by the nickname the Afghan and that Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's family had
been too intimidated by him to file an official report on her disappearance.
Mr. Atsayev said there were reports that Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva had traveled
at some point, possibly with Danilkhan, to the republic of Georgia,
which borders Chechnya on the south. Other officials have said it was
more likely that she went to Moscow through Ingushetia.
Kheda, a neighbor who would speak on the condition she only be identified
by her first name, because she feared retaliation, said it was inconceivable
that Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva had adopted extremist ideas.
"She studied," Kheda said. "She was a cultured girl, a modern girl.
She could not have had anything like this in her mind."
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