"Special Operations [zachistka]”

 

The slang word “zachistka” is used both by the representatives of federal forces and by the local residents. It designates an operation when a village or town is blocked and, without any sanction from the public prosecutor or any witnesses, soldiers search houses one after another and detain all suspicious people. Officially “zachistka” is called a “special operation aimed to check people’s residence permits and identify participants of illegal armed formations”.

 

No legislative instruments regulate such special operations. Moreover, continuous searches in people’s homes without any sanctions from public prosecutors, arbitrary detentions of people, holding them in the places that are not stipulated by the law directly contravene the RF legislation.

All this is aggravated by frequent cases of violence against local residents - beatings and robberies that take place during such “zachistkas”. Quite often “zachistkas” entailed murders of innocent civilians, tortures and “disappearance” of the arrested persons. The examples of such “zachistkas” are numerous.

The “zachistkas” in the village of Alkhan-Yurt (December 1999), Staropromyslovsky district on the city of Groznyy (January-February 2000), village of Novy-Aldy (February 2000) were the most covered by mass media events that took place during the large-scale battle actions.

Thus, in Novy-Aldy and the adjacent district of the city of Groznyy, 56 innocent civilians including old men, women and even a one-year-old baby were shot down on February 5, 2000. The ECHR passed its decision on October 12, 2006, under the complaints of the relatives of the people killed in the district of the city of Groznyy adjacent to Novy-Aldy (the case of “Estamirovs versus Russia”). Within this case seven applicants[1] accused the Russian army of the deaths of five relatives found killed in their house in February 2000. Having exhausted domestic remedies, Ruslan Estamirov and others submitted an application to the ECHR. Upon consideration of the case, the Court established that Russian authorities had violated art. 2 (right to life) and art. 13 (right to effective legal protection) of the ECPHRFF. Several villagers from Novy-Aldy were also submitted applications to the ECHR, which were recognized admissible.

Applications by the relatives of the innocent civilians from Staropromyslovsky district arbitrarily executed during the “zachistka” in January 2000 were submitted to the ECHR (the case of “Magomed Hashiyev and Roza Akayeva versus Russia”). The corpses of the brother, sister and two nephews of the first applicant, as well as of the brother of the second applicant had been found with traces of gunshot wounds. In spite of the fact that Ingushetia courts established the facts of death of the applicants’ relatives in February 2000, the criminal case was not initiated until May 2000. During the proceedings, the investigation was repeatedly closed and renewed.

On February 24, 2005, the Court passed a decision on the case. The RF was found guilty of the violation of art. 2 (right to life), art. 3 (torture ban) and art. 13 (right to effective national protection) of the ECPHRFF.

 

In the summer of 2000, large-scale battle actions were replaced with guerilla warfare; “zachistkas” started being used more often and, like before, were accompanied with cruelty, violence and robberies.[2]

Mass non-selective detentions of local residents became an important distinctive feature of many “zachistkas” throughout 2000-2003. The detained persons were taken to the “temporary filtration points” (“FPs”, for more details see chapter … ), where they were subjected to beatings and tortures. Such was the way used by the federal forces trying to obtain information on the people from the village supporting insurgents and hiding weapons. At the same time, they formed a network of secret informants.

The robberies accompanying these “special actions” became of organized nature – property was sometimes openly taken out of the houses by military trucks.

Local residents repeatedly submitted complaints to the organs of the Prosecutor’s Office, commandants, offices of the Ministry of Interior, the RF President, etc. Heads of administrations of numerous Chechen villages and towns also filed complaints regarding the actions by the employees of security agencies during “zachistka”.

One cannot say that federal authorities did not respond to this kind of complaints.

On May 24, 2001, Commander of the Coalition Task Force in the Northern Caucasus lieutenant-general V.Moltenskoy issued order No 145 aimed to restrict the scale of arbitrariness and violence during “zachistkas”. Under this order, heads of units and subdivisions of federal forces had to cooperate with the heads of local administrations, commandants, chiefs local police stations and military judges o the districts when holding special operations in towns and villages. At the beginning of the special operation, these officials had to be invited to the command center of the operation.

In June-July, 2001, in the Kurchaloevsky district village of Sernovodsk and Sunzhensky district village of Assinovskaya “zachistkas” were accompanied with violence against civilians, robberies, beatings, murders and “disappearance” of people, while the provisions of order No 145 were completely ignored.

These actions were broadly covered both in Russia and abroad. On July 25, 2001, the RF Prosecutor General issued order No 46, which recognized the wrong-doing in relation to human rights observance during special operations in its preamble to thetext. Farther on, the text of the order repeated the provisions of order No 145 issued by general Moltenskoy and provided additional instructions. The instructions required precise registration of the detained persons fixing precisely who had detained these persons and when, as well as where they had been transferred to; to inform relatives in relation to the grounds for the detention and place the detained persons were held; to "promptly verify applications and complaints regarding cases of violence used against citizens, seizure or extortion of money”, etc.

However, the “zachistkas” that followed after the issuance of order No 46 in the villages of Stary-Atagi, Alleroy, Novy-Atagi, Chiri-Yurt, Duba-Yurt, Alkhazurovo and others were nevertheless accompanied by robberies, property destruction, beatings of detained persons and “disappearances” of people. Even if public prosecutors were present during these “zachistkas”, local residents knew nothing about it.

At last, in 2002, the employees of the Prosecutor’s Office really started attending the “zachistkas”. However, the presence of one or several prosecutors during these special operations with dozens and hundreds of security officers involved could not mend the situation dramatically. Those of the public prosecutors who tried to stop the crimes often encountered resistance of the military.

The employees of the military and law enforcement bodies never introduced themselves when entering the houses during the special operations, their faces being masked. The armored personnel carriers that brought these employees either had no license plates or their plates were purposely mudded or painted. Therefore, it was difficult to identify after the “zachistka” who was responsible for the operation.

The legal rights organizations tried to insist that the federal army commanders in Chechnya ensure, at least, the following elementary measures:

  • the body sides of all the armored vehicles should necessarily have license plates;
  • when holding special operations in towns and villages, the senior officer of each group of federal soldiers should introduce himself when entering a house or premise and produce his documents;
  • upon termination of the special operation, the official responsible for the operation should by all means provide to the head of the town or village administration a complete and exhaustive list of names of all the persons detained during the operation with indication of the reason for their detention and the place where these people will be delivered.

Finally, on March 27, 2002, before the discussion of the issue related to Chechnya in the UN Commission for Human Rights, the Coalition Task Force general Moltenskoy issued order No 80 through which he obliged his subordinates to follow the aforementioned elementary norms of the law. However, this order was practically never executed.

Here are just two examples:

 

“Zachistka” in the village of Mesker-Yurt, Shalinsky district, was held from May 21 through June 11, 2002. Although military judge V.V. Tereshchuk was present in the village from the first day of the operation, the latter was accompanied by robberies. The security service employees blew up the village mayor’s office and beat the head of administration Mansur Aliyev when he tried to stand up for his fellow villagers. According to the prosecutor’s office, 208 local residents were delivered to the FP. Here, the detained persons were subjected to tortures. Thus, for example, soldiers cut the back of Barzayev Khussein with a knife and applied salt onto the wounds. Ibragim, one of the three brothers Khadjimuradovs, was tortured in the presence of two other brothers, who were later released after severe beatings and tortures.

Eighteen persons from those arrested simply “disappeared”. Fragments of the other three blown up bodies were found by the locals near the FP. The Prosecutor’s Office admits that the “disappeared ones” were detained by the security officers:[3] “During the special operation of 21.06, 2002, unrecognized persons took away to the FP Ortsuyev Islam Abdulayevich, born in 1980. The latter was taken away from his home at 157 Lenin str., village of Mesker-Yurt  in pretence of the need to check the documents and tracklessly disappeared.” Such are the statements used in relation to 21 persons. Criminal cases on the facts of their “disappearance” had been initiated but the investigation was later on suspended due to the “impossibility to identify the persons to be charged of the crime”.

 

On August 16, 2002, Russian armored troop carrier was mined and several soldiers wounded at the outskirts of the village of Tevzeni, Vvedensky district. The “zachistka” started soon after that. Breaking gates and fences armored troop carriers drove into courtyards. The jumping from them soldiers rushed into the houses where they beat people, broke and spoiled furniture, kitchenware and clothes, took away valuables.  Military vehicles crushed several dozens of trucks and cars belonging to the villagers. Soldiers detained young and old men including teenagers whom they picked randomly. They took away the school headmaster and two teachers from the teachers’ conference. The detained were taken to the outskirts of the village and told to lie down on the ground, face downwards. They were lying this way for many hours. The soldiers beat them with the gun-butts, kicked them and jumped on their backs. Then some of the people were released, but about seventy persons were taken away to the military unit headquarters, where they were held and interrogated for three days. The interrogated men were beaten and tortured with electric current so that they would give the names of those having mined the road. The soldiers attached wires to the earlobes and lower lip. The neighboring villages of Khatuni, Mahkety, Salmentauzen and Elistanzhi were also exposed to “zachistka”: . The military released the detained people only after the women from these villages held a protest action at the Government House in Groznyy that turned into mass disorders.

 

At the beginning of November 2002, the RF President declared that no broad-scale special operations should be any more held in the ChR towns and villages. After that, the number of large-scale “zachistkas” in Chechen towns and villages started gradually going down and decreased sharply after the summer of 2003. Nevertheless, large-scale special operations continued being held, although much rarer than before.

For example, 27 special operations were held in 2005 in the towns and villages of the Urus-Martanovsky district only.

Sometimes, special operations were held only by the ChR Ministry of Interior units, sometimes – jointly with the federal military forces; there were cases when “zachistkas” were performed by the federal forces independently.

Order No 80 was practically never executed in full.

Some of its provisions were observed only in some cases. However, when holding searches of the houses and courtyards, senior officers of militia or military groups practically never introduce or identify themselves. They usually do not present the lists of arrested persons to the heads of local governments.

Unlike the period of 2000, the most outrageous violations of order No 80 have been taking place not during “zachistkas” but in the course of targeted local operations in the towns and villages starting with the first half of 2003 until nowadays.

During the ChR presidential election campaign in July 2004, an attempt was made to reanimate order No 80. The ChR officials repeatedly insisted that the order is equally effective for the troops of the RF Ěinistry of Defence, the RF Ministry of Interior and for the employees of the ChR Ministry of Interior.

On July 16, the ChR Deputy Minister of Interior, militia colonel Akhmed Dakayev declared that “Provisions of order No 80 by the Commander of the Coalition Task Force in the Northern Caucasus are coming back into effect. Under this order, all the movements of armored vehicles and military groups about the Republic should be made under the control of commandants of towns and rural districts… The regulation of the special operations procedure is due to the having become more frequent cases of kidnappings in the Republic.”

Alu Alkhanov, major candidate for presidency, declared that “the matter in question is not the prohibition against detention of criminals, but the need to do it legally, and, most importantly,  providing information as to who has detained this or that person and where this person is at the given moment”. However, later the ChR officials mainly concentrated on the observance of the instruction that during special operations the employees of the Ministry of Interior should not mask their faces.

In 2004 – 2006, not only the number of “zachistkas” went down but also the scale of human rights violations during the special operations was usually much lower than before.

Nevertheless, the level of cruelty during some of the “later zachistkas” could be compared with those of the worst times.

 

On January 14, 2005, in the mountainous village of Zumsoy, Itum-Kalinsky district, federal paratroopers landed from helicopters. Before the landing, the village was exposed to uncontrollable machine gun firing from the air, although there were no insurgents in the village, nobody opened fire or offered any kind of resistance. After this, commandoes made “zachistka” in the village that was accompanied with robberies, property destruction and kidnappings. Soldiers rushed into houses, showered their inhabitants with rough abuse, broke and took away everything they found – money, jewelry, clothes, medicines, TV sets. From some of the houses, they took away all the documents they could find. In some farmsteads they shot horses and turkey cocks; blew up a car and a minibus belonging to Saidamin Khadzhiyev. In the villagers’ presence the pillage was loaded into the helicopters. In the evening of January 14, the soldiers kidnapped Shirvani Shakhidovich Nasipov, 1956. In the morning of January 15, Vakhu Makhmudovich Mukhayev, 1955, his 15-year-old son Atabi Vakhayevich  and 30 year-old Magomed-Emin Khabilovich Ibishev were taken away from their house. The same day, the soldiers left the village by helicopters taking away the kidnapped persons. The fate of the kidnapped remains unknown. The kidnapped persons’ relatives submitted applications to the ECHR that are now at the stage of communication.

 

The events having taken place in the village of Borozdinovskaya, Shelkovskoy district of Chechnya were broadly covered in mass media. On June 4, 2005, the soldiers from the “Vostok” battalion consisting of ethnic Chechens and formally subordinated to the RF Ministry of Defense held a full-scale “zachistka”, which, in fact, was a  punitive action held in the village of Borozdinovskaya populated by Dargins that followed the murder of one battalion soldier’s father. Two armored troop carriers and not less than fifteen vehicles with armed soldiers drove into the village. They rushed into the houses taking men to the local school. In the schoolyard, the “detained persons” were told to lie down onto the ground, face downwards. Everybody, including old men, teenagers and invalids were kicked and beaten with gun-butts. The people were held on the ground for more than seven hours despite of the heavy rain. The “zachistka” resulted in four burnt houses, one elderly person burnt (maybe, alive), and 11 persons taken away and “disappeared”.

The Prosecutor’s Office initiated criminal case No 34/00/0013-05 on the facts of arsons, murders and kidnappings, a special joint investigatory group visited the scene of operation. However, the weapon was seized from soldiers of the “Vostok” battalion to carry out a ballistic examination only several months after the episode. One and a half year later the investigation is not yet completed, the fate of the kidnapped villagers of Borozdinskaya has not been established, nobody has been held criminally liable for kidnappings, murders and tortures. One officer of the battalion, Mukhadi Aziyev, was put on probation in October 2005 “for abuse of power” as he had permitted his soldiers enter the village. What these soldiers were doing in the village, who of them killed and set on fire the houses taking away the people has not been established in the course of investigation.

Some time after these events, the commander of the “Vostok” battalion Sulim Yamadayev was awarded with the honorable Russian medal of “Hero of Russia”.


[1]              Three of them are presently living in the USA under the refugee status, others live in Ingushetia and Moscow

[2]              See, for example the report by the Legal Rights Center of “Memorial” titled “Myths and Truth about Tsotsin-Yurt.”

[3]              Response of the ChR Prosecutor’s Office to the inquiry made by the Legal Rights Center of “Memorial”, reference No 15/39-232-02 îň 08.10.2002.: