15-June-06

Chechnya: “Torture” Prison Revelations

Russian campaigners say Chechen kidnap victims were subjected to brutal treatment at illegal detention centre.

By Umalt Dudayev in Grozny (CRS No. 344, 15-June-06)

The authorities are to launch an investigation into claims by human rights activists that the basement of a building used until recently by Russian interior ministry troops served as a vicious torture centre.

But officials have already sought to downplay the allegations which appear to shed new light on the fate of hundreds people who have disappeared without trace.

Dozens of families of missing persons have descended on the premises in Grozny’s Octyabrskiy District - a former boarding school for deaf children - since the Russian human rights group Memorial claimed they had evidence that it had been used as an illegal detention centre, where detainees were subjected to ...

In the torture cell of Chechnya's tyrant

Publication time: 30 April 2006, 15:54

On Photo: Chechen hostage tortured by Kadirov’s puppet formation

WHEN Akhmed Isayev was taken at gunpoint to a secret detention centre run by militiamen loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin strongman of the war-torn republic of Chechnya, he hoped to be released after only a few hours of rough questioning.

But the gruesome scene the middle-aged engineer witnessed as he was dragged into a gym converted into a makeshift torture chamber left no doubt as to what awaited him.

Six men tied to the walls or gym equipment moaned in agony. They had been beaten. One was half naked, his chest festering from scorch marks inflicted with a blowtorch. Another had a broken jaw. All ...