Chechnya Weekly
November 3, 2005 – Volume VI, Issue 41

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Putin: Caucasus rebels are "beasts"
* "Disappearances" in Chechnya on the rise
* Beslan and Dubrovka victims' relatives join forces
* Former Nalchik detainee charges torture
* Where is Basaev?
* Briefs
* Chechnya's Parliamentary Elections: Public Relations Trump Democracy
By Andrei Smirnov
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PUTIN: CAUCASUS REBELS ARE "BEASTS"

During a televised joint press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende in The Hague on November 2, President Vladimir Putin likened Russia's problems in Chechnya to attacks by Islamic militants in Europe, such as the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan a year ago. "It was a terrible event [that] is of course a sign of a much broader problem called international terrorism," Reuters quoted Putin as saying. "We are fighting very cruel people—beasts in the guise of human beings who do not and do not want to understand in what time and world they live. Our response must be equal to the threat they present to modern civilization."

In the North Caucasus and Chechnya, Putin said, Russia is protecting both its own interests and those of Europe: "If we allow terrorists to raise their heads in one region, they will also raise them in others." Asked about the human rights situation in Chechnya, Putin said the state must use "civilized methods," but should not allow terrorists to employ the principles of democracy to fight democratic institutions. He added that Russia has held a referendum on the adoption of a constitution and a presidential election in Chechnya and invited representatives of "European structures" to come as observers, but "no one came."

Putin also said, "Sometimes the following question comes to my mind: Do some Europeans want to be bigger Muslims than Prophet Muhammad himself? You know, we have the following expression: To be a bigger Catholic than the pope of Rome. One sometimes can get the impression that some European politicians want to be bigger Muslims than Prophet Muhammad himself."

Balkenende, for his part, said he and Putin had talked very openly about human rights but that worries remained. "The topic of Chechnya is a very delicate one," Reuters quoted him as saying. "With this state visit we have to give attention to the fact that we are concerned about human rights and concerned about human rights activists, and the way they are treated."

The separatist Kavkazcenter website on November 2 published what it said was a telegram from Akhmad Sardali, head of the Assembly of Protection of the Sovereignty of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (AZS ChRI) to Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the United Nations' war-crimes tribunal at The Hague, ostensibly informing her that the "international terrorist" Russian President Vladimir Putin had arrived in The Hague. The telegram charged that Putin had destroyed "more than a quarter of Chechnya's population of a million together with his predecessor [Boris] Yeltsin" and "has continued the genocide of the Chechen people on his personal initiative for six years now."

"DISAPPEARANCES" IN CHECHNYA ON THE RISE

Kavkazcenter, citing Russian non-governmental human rights organizations, reported on November 2 that 116 people had been kidnapped in Chechnya over the previous month. Among those abducted, the Chechen separatist website claimed, were ten women, three police officers, two children aged seven and twelve, five teenagers aged up to 16 and a 70-year-old man. Two of those abducted were found murdered while several others were later released. The fate of the rest of those kidnapped remains unknown. Kavkazcenter also cited information from the Council of Chechen Non-Governmental Organizations that some 30 large-scale zachistki, or mopping up-operations, had been carried out in various population centers around Chechnya in October. According to the website, so-called kadyrovtsy—forces loyal to Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov—killed twenty people in night raids, including women, children and elderly people.

Kavkazcenter noted that the Chechen government has dismissed these statistics. Indeed, the head of the Chechen president's administration for human rights, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, told Interfax on November 2 that the claim that 116 people were kidnapped in October was unconcealed "disinformation" and "provocative" in nature. Nukhazhiev also said the claim was directly connected to Chechen President Alu Alkhanov's visit to the Council of Europe at the end of October and the "mutual understanding" about the situation in Chechnya he ostensibly was able to achieve, as well as the visit to Chechnya by a Council of Europe delegation.

It should be noted that according to the Regnum news agency, Alkhanov himself told a closed meeting on October 31 with representatives of Chechnya's power structures devoted to the issue of disappearances that instances of kidnapping in the republic had become more frequent, with 16 abductions in October. According to the Moscow Times, Alkhanov told reporters in Moscow on October 27 that 65 people remained missing after being abducted in Chechnya from January to September. "I'm not happy that people are still being abducted in the republic," the English-language newspaper quoted him as saying. "This is a violation of human rights."

Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the Memorial Society's council, told Ekho Moskvy that the abduction rate in Chechnya was "significantly higher" now than last year. She said that abductions were being carried out by federal forces, kadyrovtsy, members of the Chechen-manned Vostok and Zapad special battalions of the Russian army's 42nd Motor-Rifle Division, and by the rebels who, she said, "are kidnapping police officers and administration officials." The local police, she added, are using similar methods against suspected rebels and their families. According to Gannushkina, in the past, the situation involving kidnappings and other such abuses generally improved on the eve of elections. The fact that the situation is now worsening, she said, indicates that the republican authorities are losing control of the situation with the approach of Chechnya's parliamentary elections on November 27.

As newsru.com reported on November 2, Memorial's Dmitri Grushkin said in mid-October that 208 people had been kidnapped in Chechnya over the previous seven months, out of whom 107 disappeared without a trace, 87 were freed, nine were found murdered, and five were under investigation. According to Grushkin, 138 Chechens had been murdered, including 60 civilians, 33 members of local power structures, one government official and 35 rebels. The bodies of nine others remained unidentified. Since 2002, he said 1,690 people have been abducted in Chechnya, of whom 547 were freed, 166 were found murdered, 13 were under investigation and 964 disappeared without a trace. Chechen Security Council Chairman Rudnik Dudaev, however, said the figures given by the human rights activists concerning abductions were too high.

On October 26, the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) appealed to Vladimir Kravchenko, Prosecutor of the Republic of Chechnya, concerning the kidnapping and killing of Salman Arsanukaev and his son Khamzat, whose bodies were found with multiple knife wounds on the morning of October 18 after "masked and camouflaged security service personnel" abducted them from their homes in the village of Pobedinskoye the previous day. Another son, Supian, whom authorities accused of being a rebel, was killed on October 2 by security forces who found him hiding at the house in Grozny where his sister-in-law, Zarema Buraeva, lived. According to the IHF, more than 100 Chechen-speaking officers from the Defense Ministry, Federal Security Service (FSB) and Chechnya's Anti-Terrorist Center took part in the raid on the house, where they found and killed Supian Arsanukaev and detained Zarema Buraeva and her brothers Ali and Baudin Buraev, who have not been seen since.

The IHF called on Kravchenko to "locate the ‘disappeared' persons, to investigate the apparently illegal circumstances of their ‘disappearances,' and to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of the extra-judicial killings." In both cases, the IHF noted, "the alleged perpetrators" were members of "the security structures of the Chechen Republic."

BESLAN AND DUBROVKA VICTIMS' RELATIVES JOIN FORCES

Police in Moscow briefly detained a group of protesters picketing the Prosecutor General's Office building in central Moscow on October 27. Among those detained was Ella Kesaeva, a former co-Chairwoman of the Beslan Mothers' Committee who heads the Voice of Beslan, which, as Kommersant reported on October 28, is composed of some 50 "more radical former members" of the mothers' committee. A law enforcement source told Interfax that the protesters had permission to demonstrate—but not outside the Prosecutor General's Office building. According to Ekho Moskvy radio, three women from Beslan and three women from Moscow who lost relatives in the October 2004 seizure of hostages at the Dubrovka theater were among the protesters. The radio station reported that during their action, the protesters held photographs of their relatives killed at Beslan and Dubrovka, as well as placards condemning the Russian authorities and calling for international experts to investigate the incidents.

On October 25, relatives of those who died in the Dubrovka theater siege teamed up with Beslan mothers and others affected by terrorist attacks, jointly announcing the formation of a new non-governmental organization called Nord Ost (named after the musical that was being performed at the theater when the incident occurred). At a Moscow news conference, the new group issued an appeal calling on President Vladimir Putin to ensure fair investigations into the incidents. "We also want you, the president of the country, to admit your own responsibility for the death of our children, relatives and loved ones and to disclose the entire truth ... about Nord Ost," the appeal stated, the Moscow Times reported on October 26. In addition to Dubrovka and Beslan families, the Nord Ost group includes relatives of victims of the Moscow apartment bombings in September 1999 and the bombings of two planes that took off from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport in August 2004.

In an interview with Radio Liberty's Russian-language service on October 27, Kasaeva said the protest in Moscow that day was aimed at voicing distrust of the official investigation into the Beslan tragedy by the Prosecutor General's Office. After Beslan mothers met with President Vladimir Putin in early September and complained about the official probe, headed by Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel, Putin sent Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov to Beslan. Kolesnikov reported back they he had found no irregularities in Shepel's probe.

"We want to express with this our distrust in the Prosecutor General's Office; we are expressing our distrust of Shepel," Kasaeva told Radio Liberty. "He has had no effect whatsoever. The [Beslan] women traveled to see Putin for the truth, he sent down Kolesnikov, and the results were even worse. There wasn't any investigation, and there isn't one now. The testimonial evidence is not taken into account." Asked why she is not satisfied with the results of the official investigation, Kesaeva replied: "Because they don't acknowledge the facts as they are. In the words of Kolesnikov, all the actions of the military [at Beslan] were competent. And shooting with Shmels [flame-throwers] – it was all according to the law, and shooting from tanks was according to the law. The children weren't saved—that was also lawful. Everything they did was pure, everything good, everything O.K." Were the truth about the incident to come out, she added, "officials at the highest level" would have to be prosecuted.

For his part, Aleksandr Torshin, the deputy Federation Council speaker who is chairman of the parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan tragedy, rejected charges that his commission is deliberately dragging out the probe. "The slowdown is caused by the lack of a 100-percent certainty of our own conclusions," he told Nezavisimaya gazeta in an interview published on October 27. "Another brake is the lack of the results of the on-site expert examination. Independent experts should have assessed the efficiency of the operation to free the hostages, however we still don't have this document."

Meanwhile, Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin claimed on October 26, the third anniversary of the storming of the Dubrovka theater by security forces, that the assault was supposed to have taken place in the hours immediately following the seizure of the theater by Chechen gunmen on October 23, 2002, but that this was made impossible by journalists. "We were ready to start the operation to free the hostages several hours after the seizure of the Theater Center on Dubrovka, Pronin told the "Terrorism and the Electronic Media" international conference held in Gelendjik, Russia, Izvestia reported on October 27. "The ‘Alpha' [anti-terrorist] group was supposed to come by over-ground and underground routes. However, journalists, who somehow had gotten onto the roof of one of the buildings, saw the movement of the [Alpha] groups and broadcast live: ‘The spetsnaz have arrived. The operation has begun.' As a result two Alpha [members] received serious wounds and we were forced to discontinue the operation." According to Pronin, the number of people killed in the storming of the theater would have been far less had it been done immediately following the hostage seizure, because the hostage-takers had not yet had time to wire the theater with explosives and because the hostages became dehydrated and exhausted after three days of captivity—which he said, was the reason that many of them died. Pronin apparently did not mention the fact that nearly all of the 129 hostages killed in the Dubrovka incident died as a result of the gas used by the security forces to subdue the hostage-takers.

Some 300 people gathered at the Dubrovka theater center on October 26 to honor those victims. Along with relatives of those who died in the incident were officials from the Moscow mayor's office and other city officials, State Duma deputies, a delegation from the North Ossetian government and the Beslan Mothers' Committee, and relatives of people who died in the 1999 apartment building bombings and the August 2004 airliner bombings, newsru.com reported. Yabloko party deputy chairman Sergei Mitrokhin noted "not a single official took responsibility for what happened (at Dubrovka) and that is one of the reasons why an analogous tragedy took place two years later in Beslan."

FORMER NALCHIK DETAINEE CHARGES TORTURE

A man who was detained by Kabardino-Balkaria's anti-organized crime directorate (UBOP) on suspicion that he participated in the October 13 raid on police stations and other targets in Nalchik described to Kavkazky Uzel how he was tortured while in custody. "I was detained on the 13th on a street near my home," the website quoted him as saying on November 1. "Apparently, the reason was that someone had informed on me, [telling the authorities] that I am a believer. I want to emphasize that I pray only at home and don't go to the mosque. I was taken to the sixth department (UBOP of the Interior Ministry of Kabardino-Balkaria). By that time, there were already very many detainees there. They were standing in the corridor with their faces to the wall. Exactly how many people were there, I can't say, inasmuch as it was impossible to turn one's head. I think it was from 50 to 100 people. The number changed. Some were let go, others were taken elsewhere." The former detainee said the authorities tried to torture him into admitting that he had participated in the rebel raid. "They beat me with their hands, feet, truncheons, rifle butts. Everyone who walked past tried to strike [me]. I heard the moans and cries of other detainees. Then they examined my fingers and apparently were convinced they didn't have traces of gunpowder or gun oil, and after that they let me go. One of my acquaintances who was also detained told me afterwards that he was tortured with electric shocks."

Kavkazky Uzel reported on October 28 that Amnesty International had expressed concern about the fate of Rasul Kudaev, the former inmate of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, who was detained on suspicion of participation in the Nalchik raid, something that others who know him claim is untrue (see Chechnya Weekly, October 27). The London-based human rights group said in an appeal addressed to Kabardino-Balkarian prosecutor Yuri Ketov, Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov and Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev, that it was concerned about the possible use of torture against Kudaev and reports that he was not receiving medical help. "There exist serious fears in connection with his fate, the state of his health and the threat that torture will be resumed," the group's appeal read.

Kavkazky Uzel reported that Kudaev was beaten while in custody, with the aim of extracting a confession that he had participated in the October 13 armed attacks. The website quoted his mother, Fatima Tekaeva, as saying he was beaten so badly while in custody that the emergency medical services had to be called in, but that the emergency medical services had refused to give her a document confirming this, telling her that it could be issued only with the permission of the law enforcement organs.

Kavkazky Uzel reported on November 1 that representatives of two international human rights groups—Ole Solvang of the Russian Justice Initiative and Aleksandr Petrov of Human Rights Watch—had arrived in Nalchik and met with relatives of rebels and other detained by the law enforcement agencies following the October 13 raid. According to the website, the Russian Justice Initiative has already gathered material concerning the authorities' refusal to return the bodies of dead rebels to their families and sent it to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. The website reported on October 29 that the situation in Nalchik remained very tense as a result of the fact that relatives of rebel fighters killed in the October 13 raid had been trying unsuccessfully to get their bodies returned. Relatives had been protesting outside the republican government's headquarters in Nalchik for 12 days and witnesses said that some of the 85 bodies that had been stored in a refrigerated train car had started to decompose. Newsru.com reported eyewitnesses as saying that relatives had ransomed four of the bodies for $45,000.

Ekho Moskvy quoted relatives of people killed in Nalchik on October 13 as saying that ordinary citizens as well as rebel fighters were among the victims and that the authorities had counted anyone killed who did not have identification on them at the time of their death as being among the rebels. Relatives noted that at the time of the October 13 raid, law enforcement personnel were blockaded inside their headquarters, so that many local men had raced to save their wives and children without taking their identity documents with them.

Yevgeny Ikhlov, head of the information-analytical service of the For Human Rights movement, told Kavkazky Uzel: "Corpses must not be taken hostage. This will generate a new round of violence and tension in the region. Relatives are unable to bury their dead according to all the rules; to conduct burial ceremonies according to Islamic canons. Tension [and] discontent with the authorities over such actions will accumulate, as they accumulated in Beslan. And then they will pour out in an explosion. Not right away, but after attitudes toward the actions of the authorities reach critical mass. It will be a huge explosion!"

On October 31, Kavkazky Uzel posted an appeal by the Kabardino-Balkarian Rights Center claiming that the number of illegal detentions and instances of torture was on the increase and warning that the situation in the republic could develop along the lines of Ingushetia and Dagestan, "where explosions, killings and kidnapping have long since become a daily occurrence as in Chechnya." The group said that the authorities' refusal to hand over the bodies of dead rebels to their relatives was making the situation worse and building support for the rebels.

For his part, Kabardino-Balkaria's President, Arsen Kanokov, told Novaya gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya in an interview published on October 31 that he had seen photographs showing the poor condition of the bodies of those killed in the October 13 raid and had shown the photographs to the republic's prosecutor, Yuri Ketov. "Now everything has been done: [the bodies have been wrapped] in polyethylene, identified, the refrigerators are working," he told Politkovskaya. "I ordered that photographs proving that the bodies are in a proper condition be published in the media." As for the demand that the bodies of rebel fighters be returned to their relatives, Kanokov said: "We can only tell the relatives: appeal to the president, to the federal structures. But, on the other hand …relatives of the dead policemen say that they don't want ‘them' to be buried in the cemetery alongside [their relatives]…It's a very hard choice to make." Pressed by Politkovskaya as to his personal choice, Kanokov said: "It's fifty-fifty. To calm society, it's necessary to return [the bodies]. But the law [on not returning the bodies of terrorists] must not be broken."

More generally, Kanokov said his attitude toward the families of the dead rebels was hardening. "As president, I am looking for a way out, so that a split in society does not happen, so that some are not set off against others," he told Politkovskaya. "They are all our citizens…I am disturbed today by the aggressiveness of the relatives of the [rebel] fighters who were killed: I consider it improper. I myself was for humane treatment of those who were killed, but today I am becoming harsher with each passing day. If the state comes off weak…One must be fair and tough. Fair strength has always been honored in the Caucasus… And those who died – those guys were the weakest link in the organization that arranged it all [the October 13 attack]. If we don't fight back, then I'm afraid our humaneness will be taken as a sign of weakness."

WHERE IS BASAEV?

Interfax reported on October 31 that when President Putin was asked during an interview with the Netherlands' Nederland 1 television and NRC Handlesblatt newspaper why Russian troops cannot find Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev, he responded: "Why hasn't [Osama] bin Laden been found yet? [He has not been found] because people like him are hiding like rats, using their supporters as shields." Chechen President Alu Alkhanov, for his part, said on October 27 that he believes Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basaev is located somewhere in the North Caucasus. The quicker Basaev and his accomplices are located, Alkhanov told a press conference at the offices of Interfax in Moscow, the quicker they can be "neutralized" and the situation in Chechnya and the North Caucasus stabilized.

Several observers, however, believe that Russia's special services—or, at least, some within their ranks—know where Basaev is but are not interested in capturing him. The journalist Yevgeny Kiselev said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio on November 1 that if Basaev did not exist, he would have to be invented. "Mr. Basaev is needed; such a person, hiding and running around the mountains on crutches or on his artificial limb, is needed by the Party of War, which hasn't disappeared, which needs to continue this special operation—in other words, the war in Chechnya—which has been going on so many years," Kiselev said. "It is well known that there is the version—I didn't make it up—that in general Mr. Basaev has had special relations with certain Russian special services virtually since the start of the 1990s." According to Kiselev, the rumor is that Basaev has had special ties with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian army's general staff, the GRU.

In a similar vein, the journalist Aleksandr Minkin speculated in an interview with Ekho Moskvy on October 20 that there are certain people within the Russian authorities who have had a "long and fruitful" relationship with Basaev. "If since 1995, since Budennovsk, for ten years they haven't been able to catch him, that cannot be for no reason," Minkin told the radio station. "It means he is in contact with someone. He was freed from ambush, freed from encirclement. And now in Nalchik, on the day that Nalchik was seized, they said that evening that Basaev had been killed, and then it turned out that he was alive. I'll say something different. I think that he will be killed at some point, but I don't think he'll ever be taken alive. He knows so much about those high-ranking people, that like Maskhadov, an unexpected death awaits him – at the moment he agrees to negotiations."

BRIEFS

--FEDERAL TROOPS KILLED IN CHECHNYA
An improvised explosive device killed an Interior Ministry serviceman who was on patrol in Grozny's Staropromyslovsky district, a Chechen law enforcement source told Interfax on November 3. The source also reported that a rebel fighter had been captured in a wooded area on the outskirts of Urus-Martan. Radio Liberty reported on November 2 that a column of military vehicles was fired on in the Vedeno district, as a result of which two servicemen were killed and three wounded. RIA Novosti reported on October 31 that two Interior Ministry soldiers were killed and two were wounded during a special operation in southeast Chechnya. A local police official said militants had opened fire on the soldiers during an operation to apprehend them. Utro.ru reported on October 28 that a land mine planted on a roadside in Grozny detonated as an engineer reconnaissance convoy was driving past, wounding three servicemen. Interfax reported on October 27 that a sergeant from the 42nd Motor-Rifle Division was killed during a routine mine-clearing operation in the Itum-Kale district.