Atrocities against Chechen civilians on the rise

Atrocities against Chechen civilians on the rise, rights groups say

They came in the dead of night in armored carriers and mini-buses, quietly rolling up to a courtyard ringed by tiny brick houses in the Chechen village of Duba-Yurt. In a matter of minutes, they dragged several half-dressed men from their beds, threw them into the vehicles and speeded off.

Villagers who described the March 27 abductions said the kidnappers were Russian soldiers. They spoke Russian and used Russian armored vehicles. Even if Chechen guerrillas, whom Russian authorities blame for the abductions, did steal the armored carriers, they never could have made it past the string of Russian checkpoints.

Thirteen days later the bodies of the eight men were found in a nearby creek. They had been tortured and shot execution-style. Some of the bruised, bloodied bodies bore scorch marks, a videotape showed. Some of the men's eyes were gouged out. One man's three gold crowns were yanked from his mouth.

«A human being couldn't do this», said Said-Hussein Elmurzayev in Nazran, 10 miles from the western edge of war-torn Chechnya. His 30-year-old son and two nephews were among the dead.

With Russia's war to crush a separatist rebellion in the southern province of Chechnya in its fifth year, human-rights organizations and Chechen civilians say atrocities attributed to Russian forces seem to be on the rise.

Rights groups based in and around Chechnya say a disturbing spate of civilian deaths this spring include a mother and her five young children killed in an airstrike on a rural Chechen house, the Duba-Yurt slayings and several kidnappings in March in Ingushetia, the tiny Russian republic west of Chechnya.

One of the kidnappings involved an investigator with the Ingush prosecutor's office who disappeared March 11 after he gave his bosses a report on atrocities and human-rights violations allegedly committed by local Russian intelligence agents. He has not been heard from since.

«How do these stories usually end?» said Mikhail Ezhiev, executive director of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a human-rights group in Nazran. «With the usual reply from the authorities that those responsible have not been found, that further investigation is useless and that the case must be closed».

Russian soldiers rarely are held accountable for crimes committed against Chechen civilians. Last week a jury acquitted four Russian special forces officers of killing six Chechens who were mistaken for separatist fighters in 2002. Though the officers acknowledged they were told by superiors to kill the civilians, jurors decided they were innocent because they were following orders.

The violence challenges recent assurances from the Russian government that normality is returning to the war-weary mountain region. Jobs are virtually non-existent and housing is scarce, aggravated by Russian authorities' closing of all but one of the refugee camps in Ingushetia.

In recent weeks, Moscow's shaky control of Chechnya has gotten a boost from the captures or killings of several key separatists. Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who was living in exile in Qatar, was killed - allegedly by Russian intelligence agents - in a car blast in February. Abu Walid, an Islamic Arab militant and top Chechen field commander, reportedly was killed by a bomb last month.

Chechen separatist leaders have vowed to keep fighting. Still at large are Chechnya's former president, Aslan Maskhadov, and Shamil Basayev, who Russian authorities say masterminded the 2002 takeover of a Moscow theater and several recent suicide bombings.

«We shall force the Russian aggressors to leave our sacred soil», Maskhadov was quoted as saying on a pro-rebel Web site.

Human-rights organizations say many of the kidnappings attributed to the Russian military take place when soldiers perform zachistki, or sweeps, through the Chechen countryside.

The operations became notorious symbols of the war's brutality. Fighting-age Chechen men rounded up in the sweeps often were found mutilated and battered as a warning to other Chechens. Those who survived told of being beaten with truncheons or tortured with electric shocks.

The Duba-Yurt kidnappings had all the markings of a sweep. Roughly 50 armed men in camouflage and masks slipped into the courtyard at 2 a.m. and began kicking down doors to the 19 homes at 36 Podgornaya St.

Musa Shaipov was watching boxing on television when the gunmen stormed in. He tried to run but was stopped by a rifle butt blow to his stomach. The man they wanted was Shaipov's brother, Lechi. They found him and threw him into the courtyard with the other men they sought.

None of the men taken away had any link to Chechen guerrillas, their relatives said. Zelimkhan Osmayev, 26, was a construction worker. Sharip Elmurzayev, 33, drove a cab. Lechi Shaipov, 42, sold seeds at a local market.

«We can't understand why they were arrested», said Osmayev's brother, Khavazh-Baudi Osmayev.

Said-Hussein Elmurzayev said his son and nephews might have been victims of mistaken identity. He said his family recently learned that Russian authorities were pursuing a suspected terrorist with the same surname.

Relatives said they found out from local authorities that the men were being held at a Russian military base near Grozny, Chechnya's capital. Mothers and wives of the missing men stood in the dirt road leading into Duba-Yurt in protest, using tractor tires and large rocks to block the way. Two days later, Russian soldiers dispersed the crowd.

On April 9, the bodies of the men were found after a woman saw soldiers in masks throwing corpses into a creek near the village of Serzhen-Yurt. Relatives of the men went to the regional police office to pursue an investigation.

The officer on duty told the relatives to go home. «He said, 'Today isn't a working day'», Khavazh-Baudi Osmayev recalled. «'Come back tomorrow'».

The North Caucasus Unit of the Russian Federal Security Service would not answer questions about the Duba-Yurt kidnappings. The Russian news agency Interfax reported that the unit's spokesman, Col. Ilya Shabalkin, blamed Chechen guerrillas for the kidnappings.

Shabalkin told Interfax that the guerrilla unit responsible was formed «to carry out attacks and murders to trigger civilian panic».

Boris Ozdoyev still holds out hope that his son Rashid, a 30-year-old investigator with the Ingush prosecutor's office, will turn up alive. He was in a car with another man in northern Ingushetia on March 11 when three cars suddenly blocked their way.

Witnesses said 10 armed men in masks placed bags on the two men's heads, threw them in one of the cars and drove away.

Ozdoyev, a retired judge, said his son's job included the dangerous task of determining whether local Russian intelligence agents were breaking the law. Four months ago, Rashid Ozdoyev submitted a report that accused local FSB agents of violating the human rights of Ingush civilians. A few days before his disappearance, he submitted a similar report to FSB officials in Moscow, Ozdoyev said.

Ozdoyev said his older son, an agent with the Ingush FSB, found out that after the kidnapping, Rashid's car was stored briefly at the FSB's garage in Ingushetia but later was moved. Ozdoyev said he spoke with the head of the Ingush FSB, who denied that his agents kidnapped Rashid.

Though he understood his son's resolve, Ozdoyev said he urged him to abandon his crusade.

«He told me, «You can hardly imagine what kinds of terrible things they are doing to innocent people».

Ozdoyev remembered his son saying: «I am paid exactly for monitoring the situation with human rights at these agencies. I cannot, in front of Allah, bring home my pay without doing the work I have to do».

BY ALEX RODRIGUEZ
Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com