Chechnya Weekly - Volume VI, Issue 40

October 27, 2005

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Kabardino-Balkaria cracks down on Muslims
* Observers continue to question why Nalchik happened
* Four servicepersons killed in Ingushetia
* Three rebels killed in Dagestan
* Trial of Maskhadov's associates continues
* Sadulaev restructures rebel government
* Briefs
* Nalchik: Chechen Rebels Build on Ancestor's Tactics
By Andrei Smirnov
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KABARDINO-BALKARIA CRACKS DOWN ON MUSLIMS

Russian media have been reporting over the past week that large-scale security operations are continuing in Kabardino-Balkaria and elsewhere in the North Caucasus following the October 13 rebel attacks in Nalchik. Gazeta reported on October 26 that Ramazan Tembotov, a local legislator from the village of Khasnya in Nalchik's suburbs and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, was arrested without explanation on October 23 and taken to the headquarters of RUBOP, the anti-organized crime directorate, in Nalchik. "People in masks came flying in, they [treated me] like a criminal, with obscene language. It is a disgrace for me—after all, the treatment of a deputy is special, like [the treatment of] an attorney; everyone knows me in the village," Tembotov told the newspaper. "I, unlike others, was not beaten: they lead me around the rooms, the cellars, and showed what they were doing to other detainees: they were torturing people like the Gestapo. No lawyers, no interrogations—simply beating to death, until they confessed or pointed to others." Tembotov said that the police personnel displayed particular animosity toward anything connected to Islam. He was released on October 24, the day after his detention, and told Gazeta that he thought the only thing that saved him was a telephone call he had managed to make to an acquaintance who works for the Federal Security Service.

According to Gazeta, at least 2,000 people have been arrested in Kabardino-Balkaria since the October 13 raids (at least that is the number of complaints which mothers have registered with the republican prosecutor's office concerning the detention of their sons). Ramazan Tembotov told the newspaper that those arrested are on lists that include "Wahhabis," people who simply attended mosques and others who were previously detained for various reasons.

Also among those arrested, Gazeta reported, are "Islamic refuseniks." According to the newspaper, some 1,000 Muslims from Kabardino-Balkaria this year appealed to President Vladimir Putin to allow them to emigrate, and 400 Muslims from the republic issued an appeal to the international community in September accusing the republic's enforcement organs of repression and asking for political asylum in any country of the world. Tembotov said that around 600 of these "refuseniks," along with local human rights activists, are among those who have been arrested since October 13.

Ramazan Tembotov said he has been unable to locate fellow Khasnya villagers who were also detained on October 23: Rasul Nogerov, Zeitun Sultanov, Zeitun Gaev, Tstsras Etezov, Rasul Khalaikhanov and Anatoly Gazhonov. Another Khasnya resident who was arrested is Rasul Kudaev, who spent nearly one year in the U.S.-run prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, after being captured by U.S.-backed coalition forces in Afghanistan. In February 2004, Kudaev and six other Russians detained at Guantanamo were returned to Russia, where they were subsequently set free by Russian authorities who said there was insufficient proof that they had been involved in the criminal activities of Afghanistan's Taliban regime. After the ex-Guantanamo detainees were freed, Kudaev's mother, Fatima Tekaeva, threatened to sue the U.S. government for the alleged mistreatment of her son while under U.S. detention, which, she claims, ruined Kudaev's health.

As Kommersant reported on October 24, Kudaev is suspected of being one of seven armed rebels who attacked a traffic police post at the entrance of Khasnya on October 13. The attackers fired on the post and at the windows of a nearby hospital. No one was hurt in the attack. However, Ramazan Tembotov, who knows Kudaev and his family well, told Gazeta he is sure Kudaev was not involved. Gazeta reported that Kudaev's current exact location is unknown and the authorities have not allowed his family to send him medicine.

According to a search warrant signed by Y.A. Savrulin, an investigator with Southern Federal District branch of the federal Prosecutor General's Office, Kudaev's home was searched on the basis of an anonymous telephone tip claiming that he had been involved in the September 13 attack and was in possession of weapons and ammunition, Kavkazky Uzel reported on October 25. While no weapons were found in his house and the prosecutor's office had not sanctioned his arrest, Kudaev was nonetheless taken into custody, the website reported. On October 24, Orkhan Dzhemal of the weekly Versia said in a statement issued to Kavkazky Uzel that it was impossible Rasul Kudaev was involved in the October 13 attacks, inasmuch as he has been disabled since his imprisonment in Guantanamo and moves around with difficulty. Geidar Dzhemal, head of the Islamic Committee of Russia, claimed in an interview with Itar-Tass on October 24 that Kudaev's "confession" was beaten out of him. "If you have been in the hands of the Kabardino-Balkaria police, you will confess to anything," Dzhemal said. "It is a question of how intensively they work on you. They simply know how to beat someone and how to beat him severely. There anyone pleads guilty to charges and then retracts testimony in court. This doesn't mean anything. He [Kudaev] is a handicapped person who can only move inside his home. He could not have participated in any kind of an attack. He is not physically able to do this. His liver is in a bad state."

Memorial said in a statement that police in Kabardino-Balkaria have been carrying out large-scale "prophylactic activities" accompanied by numerous human rights violations, including illegal arrests, beatings and torture, newsru.com reported on October 26. According to the human rights group, "the fight against Wahhabism has turned into the persecution of Muslims generally. The police in Kabardino-Balkaria has become an odious institution not only for extremists, not only for Muslims, but for the bulk of the population; everyone has had enough."

Kavkazky Uzel on October 26 quoted from an appeal written by several local journalists and activists in Kabardino-Balkaria to the republic's authorities. "What took place on October 13 was a planned action that had the aim of destabilizing the situation in the republic, to impede positive changes that have taken place, and to cause trouble and splits in Kabardino-Balkarian society," the appeal read. "In order to achieve their goals, destructive forces used the contradictions in the republic's Muslim milieu that have appeared in recent years. We believe that what happened was largely provoked by the insufficiently considered actions of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria Interior Ministry in the fight against so-called radical Islam. The far-from-always justified repression against Muslims has added dozens of young people to the ranks of the active and aggressive Wahhabis. In condemning the armed attack on the republic's power structures, in conveying our sympathies to the families of the policemen who were killed, we at the same time believe that in order to relax the atmosphere, in order not to further heat up the situation and deepen the split in the Muslim community, it would be the right decision to return the bodies of the [rebel] fighters to their relatives for burial. In addition, information has leaked to the press that those detained on suspicion of having participated in the attack on the city are being subjected to savage torture. We believe that by acting in such a way, the law enforcement organs are preparing the ground for future excesses. We live in a civilized world and should act according to the laws by which international civilized society lives."

In the wake of the October 13 violence in Nalchik, the anti-Muslim crackdown has apparently spread to the heretofore relatively stable North Caucasian republic of Adygeya. Newsru.com reported on October 26 that RUBOP, the anti-organized crime directorate, of Adygeya's Interior Ministry detained six Muslims leaving the cathedral mosque in Maikop, Adygeya's capital, after evening prayers during an operation to neutralize the "extremist underground in the republic. Among those detained were the cathedral mosque's imam, Ruslan Khakirov, and his deputy, Asker Bogus. Both men belong to the official Spiritual Board of Muslims of Adygeya and Krasnodar Krai. Also detained was a member of the republic's official Sambo team.

According to ingushetiya.ru, the six detainees were held overnight at the RUBOP headquarters, where they were tortured into confessing that they had participated in extremist activities. According to the website, they were stripped naked for their interrogations and accussed of observing Islamic norms of hygiene and wearing beards. The following day, they were taken to court along with two Chechen students who had also been detained, but the judge, Ruslan Matyzhev, ordered their release, stating that there was no evidence they had violated the law. The six former detainees have had medical examinations confirming that they were beaten and are trying to complain about their detention to the republican prosecutor's office.

Newsru.com wrote that the incident in Adygeya could not be written off as an instance of "typical" police brutality, because as "the policemen who carried out the arrest of the Muslims and the interrogations with torture openly admitted that they were carrying out this action on direct orders from above ‘in connection with events in Nalchik.'"

OBSERVERS CONTINUE TO QUESTION WHY NALCHIK HAPPENED

Novaya gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya wrote in the biweekly's October 20 edition that the main reason for the Nalchik attack was that the "oppression" of Muslims in Kabardino-Balkaria had reached such a level that the "local jamaats—that is, the religious communities (only don't confuse them with the gangs)—had no choice other than to move to self-defense. Even by means of self-annihilation." It was not only the radical Yarmuk Jamaat, already implicated in various other attacks, that felt compelled to participate in the Nalchik attack, Politkovskaya wrote. "Other jamaats also practically had no choice left. Even if you don't mention the closure of mosques and the ban on praying not in the way ‘one is officially supposed to,' the police in Kabardino-Balkaria in recent months did something completely prohibited: they beat pregnant Muslim women, knowing that they were pregnant and Muslim…; during a special operation for ‘the final destruction of the Yarmuk Jamaat,' they killed infants together with their parents, right in their apartments, and did not even return the bodies of the children to their relatives." Muslims, according to Politkovskaya, say that an "anti-Islamic pressing" has forced many people into "the shadows, the underground."

"Nalchik was a direct action of the Muslim underground which is growing stronger on the yeast of the top Russian Federation officialdom's stupid Caucasus policy," Politkovskaya concluded. "The stupider the policy, the more horrible the actions. Kabardino-Balkaria in recent months saw the stupidest anti-Muslim policy (after Chechnya, with its Kadyrovite quasi-Muslim clownery). And a demonstration resulted, albeit one that was completely senseless, admittedly to no avail and doomed to blood and death. But [it was] desperation; [it was] all about: ‘We will take revenge on you'."

Apparently referring to some of the same incidents cited by Politkovskaya, columnist Yulia Latynina wrote in the Moscow Times on October 26 that the sister of one of the insurgents killed in Nalchik "had been beaten up by the cops on the street a few months before. On Oct. 13 he took up arms. He was a poor shot because he suffered from cerebral palsy, but this didn't stop him. The pregnant wife of another dead man had also been beaten by police. She had stepped out to the bakery in her house slippers and shawl. Fearing a miscarriage, she begged the cops not to hit her in the stomach, but they hit her anyway. Her husband joined the guerrillas."

Aleksei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center also said that the October 13 violence was a result of the local siloviki "deliberately heating up tensions" over the last five years. "Of the two communities of the republic, Yarmuk from the beginning came forward with radical demands, but the community [Jamaat-CW] of Kabardino-Balkaria, which was led by Musa Mukozhev and Anzor Astemirov, acted openly: these were responsible and educated people; they founded the Institute for Islamic Research, [and] were open to everyone," Gazeta quoted Malashenko as saying. "In response, they [the republic's siloviki-CW] started to persecute them, arrest them, beat them in the mosques. Now the guys who were loyal just a year ago are accused of organizing a rebellion. And it is possible that during these five years some of them were driven to the point where they took up arms."

Kommersant reported on October 24 that Kabardino-Balkaria's Interior Ministry has announced a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the capture of Anzor Astemirov—who, it alleges, was one of the October 13 raid's organizers. Astemirov, who is already on the federal wanted list, was allegedly involved in the December 2004 attack on a regional branch of the Federal Drug Control in Nalchik, during which four of the service's employees were killed and a large number of weapons were stolen. The Yarmuk Jamaat claimed responsibility for that attack (see Chechnya Weekly, October 6).

The Yarmuk Jamaat itself put forward its own explanations for the October 13 raid on Nalchik in a statement posted on the separatist Daymohk website on October 17. Stating that its fighters took part in the raid on Nalchik, Yarmuk dismissed some of the explanations for why the attack was carried out that have been put forward by proffered "unbelievers." Commenting on the idea that the attack occurred because of the bad economic situation and unemployment in Kabardino-Balkaria, the group noted that this "nonsense was also mumbled, like a hedgehog in the fog, by the…Putinite lackey [Kabardino-Balkarian President Arsen] Kanokov." To be a "mujahideen" is not "work, but the obligation of every able-bodied Muslim," the statement read, adding that the attackers in Nalchik targeted "puppet structures, not banks." Responding to the idea that the attack was aimed at the "incorrect policy of Russia in the Caucasus," Yarmuk stated: "What kind of a policy can occupiers have in occupied territory except the extermination and enslavement of the local population and plundering!" As for the idea that the attack was connected to the "struggle of local clans for powers," the group stated: "We will leave this gibberish without commentary."

"To this whole propagandistic lie we again state: We, praise to Allah, are Muslims, and we are unpretentious people," Yarmuk stated. "It has never been in history that Muslims fought for the sake of profit, glory or power. Muslims have fought either for the sake of establishing the Law of Allah on earth; or protecting their religion, honor or native land; or aiding Muslims who are being subjected to aggression or those who are under protection by treaty. In our case, the Muslims of Kabarda and Balkaria are fighting against the Russian occupiers and local hypocrites [munafiki] for establishing the Law of Allah, protecting our Religion, Honor and Native Land."

It is worth noting that at least one observer doubts that the Yarmuk Jamaat actually exists. "I have the impression that Yarmuk is a phantom, something mythical," Akhmet Yarlykapov of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology told Kavkazky Uzel on October 24. "I have been in Kabardino-Balkaria many times, studied this problem but still don't fully understand what Yarmuk is. Even in the law enforcement organs they say that there is no Yarmuk, and that the Jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria is responsible for all the terrorist acts. And that in order to deflect suspicion from itself, the jamaat made all statements in the name of Yarmuk, which they specially thought up [for this purpose]." So the existence of Yarmuk has so far not been proven. Like Aleksei Malashenko, Yarlykapov said that the leaders of the Jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria are "responsible" and "rational" people, "who were prepared to work stably and legally on the Russian legal field. They did not plan to go underground; they on the contrary loudly announced themselves. But, unfortunately, the authorities chose the route of repression. There were many repressive measures with respect to this jamaat. As a result, Musa Mukozhev was forced to go underground and many Muslims from the jamaat went with him."

FOUR SERVICEPERSONS KILLED IN INGUSHETIA

Four servicepersons were killed in the outskirts of Nazran, Ingushetia, on October 26 when unknown gunmen fired on their car with automatic weapons and grenade launchers, RIA Novosti reported. A source in the press service of the republic's Interior Ministry said three officers, including a captain, major, and private first class, died in the attack. Two of the victims – the private and a senior lieutenant - were women, the source said. October 10, Kavkazky Uzel quoted an Ingushetian law enforcement source as saying that more than 20 attacks targeting the staff of local and federal power structures had been carried out during the two-month period from August 15 to October 20. According to the source, six officers were killed and 11 were wounded in the attacks. Another official source told the website that the reason for the "sharp increase" in the number of attacks was that rebel forces were attempting to demonstrate their effectiveness after a series of successful operations against their leaders.

Yet Ingushetian opposition leader Musa Ozdoev blamed the increase in attacks on the actions of the siloviki. "This is all the result of the incompetent policy of the leadership of the republic and the lawlessness on the part of the siloviki in relation to the civilian population," he told Kavkazky Uzel. "I have tried to explain that this must not be done, have drawn attention to instances of kidnapping of citizens [and] the kind of torture they're subject to after being detained. I tried to express this using legal methods, through peaceful acts of protest, but they did not want to listen to me. Now we are reaping the fruits of this policy."

THREE REBELS KILLED IN DAGESTAN

Dagestani Interior Minster Adilgerei Magomedtagirov told reporters in Makhachkala on October 25 that three rebels—Gadzhimagomed Ismailov, Murad Lazkhiyalov and Makhach Rasulov—had been killed in a special operation conducted by security forces in the Dagestani capital, the Regnum news agency reported. On October 24, Dagestani law enforcement personnel arrived at an apartment building in Makhachkala after receiving intelligence that rebel fighters were holed up there. When the rebels refused to surrender and opened fire on the security forces, all of the five-story apartment building's residents were evacuated, the building was surrounded and additional personnel from Interior Ministry special units were brought in, along with armor. The apartment building in which the rebels were holed was fired on with grenade launchers and heavy machineguns, and the rebels returned fire. Two OMON troops were lightly wounded in the battle, which lasted two hours. After the shooting subsided, security forces entered the apartment and found the bodies of two of the gunmen. The body of a third gunman was found later and law enforcement sources said they had difficulty identifying the body because it had been badly burned.

According to RIA Novosti, the head of the Dagestani Interior Ministry's press service, Abdulmanap Musaev, identified Ismailov and Lazkhiyalov as members of the group headed by Rasul Makasharipov, the "emir" of the Sharia Jamaat who was killed in April. Regnum reported that the third militant, Makhach Rasulov, spoke fluent French and Arabic, translated articles from Arabic, published a religious journal and wrote articles for local newspapers. Interior Minster Magomedtagirov said the dead militants are suspected to have been involved in assassination attempts on police officers, the murders of Dagestani National Policy, Information and Foreign Affairs Minister Zagir Arukhov, and Center for Social Research and Political Technologies Magomedzagid Varisov, among others.

The owner of the apartment where the militants were holed up, Raisat Ismailova, left the apartment building with a white flag after the shootout began. Magomedtagirov said that the family that hosted the militants would be treated as accomplices.

TRIAL OF MASKHADOV'S ASSOCIATES CONTINUES

Vakhid Murdashev, one of the four associates of Aslan Maskhadov who were with the late Chechen separatist leader when he was killed last March 8 in the village of Tolstoi-Yurt and are now being tried by the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic, told the court on October 25 that Russia's special services may have tracked down Maskhadov through a phone call he received from Tim Guldimann, the Swiss diplomat who led the OSCE mission in Chechnya during the mid-1990s. As reported by Kommersant on October 26, the former Maskhadov adviser tried to convince the court that he had not participated in an armed uprising, which is one of the charges against him. "Yes, I had a pistol, which I was given by the MVD of the republic, but I didn't shoot anybody with it," Murdashev said, insisting that all his activities as Maskhadov's adviser were peaceful. "For example, I helped the president in making contacts in preparation for negotiations." When the judge reminded him that he was accused of participation in an armed rebellion, Murdashev denied that, insisting that neither he nor Maskhadov wanted to fight and were even opposed to Chechnya's complete separation from Russia. Murdashev accused both the federal authorities and the West of instigating war in the Caucasus—the latter because it "wanted to control Chechen oil," Kommersant reported.

Murdashev claimed that in January 2005, former OSCE Chechnya mission head Tim Guldimann called Maskhadov, and that Russia's special services may have traced that call and thereby discovered Maskhadov's whereabouts in Tolstoi-Yurt. (Both Shamil Basaev and a Novaya gazeta correspondent have claimed that Russia's special services traced Maskhadov through his cell phone.) Murdashev also said that representatives of Maskhadov had secretly met with Arkady Volsky, former head of the Russia Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists, in order to launch negotiations. "Someone impeded him [Maskhadov] from doing this, and it's a pity," Murdashev said.

The judge also questioned Skandarbek Yusupov, who owned the Tolstoi-Yurt home in which Maskhadov was hiding when he was killed. Yusupov said that his nephew Ilyas Iliskhanov had asked him to put up two people for six months and that he had agreed. According to Yusupov, he picked up the Chechen rebel leader in his car on November 17, 2004, without even knowing that it was Maskhadov. When the car was stopped at a checkpoint, Yusupov recounted, "My passengers, having asked me to sit quietly, started to explain something to the soldiers loudly and even crudely used foul language with them, after which we drove through into the village."

The trial's first court session took place on October 10, Prague Watchdog reported on October 26. During that session, the four defendants—Murdashev, Yusupov, Viskhan Khadzhimuradov and Iles Iriskhanov—stated that during the preliminary investigation the staff of the regional anti-organized crime directorate (RUBOP) in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, obtained confessions by torture and other illegal means. Murdashev and Yusupov said that their health was seriously impaired because of the torture. All four defendants are charged with actively participating in an armed rebellion to forcefully overturn the constitution; disrupting the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation; illegally owning, carrying, and transporting weapons; and using false documents.