Illegal Prisons Today

 

From the end of 2003, the number of mass “zachistkas” in Chechnya essentially reduced and practically no new FPs were created respectively. During the last few years, the detained and kidnapped persons are by far rarer delivered to the military base in Khankala. However, new illegal detention places are being created to replace the old habitual ones. The hostages are held in illegal prisons in the places of deployment of the Chechen pro-federal security structures.

One of places where the detained and kidnapped persons are illegally held is located in the village of Tsentoroy where the Chechnya Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov and his family are living. At present, this place is as notoriously famed in Chechnya, as was the military base of Khankala two years ago. It was here that on May 1, 2006, the delegation of the European Committee for the Prevention of Tortures and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was disallowed. According to the information of the Legal Rights Center of “Memorial”, the Center of “Demos” and the International Helsinki Federation, all the people held in the illegal prison had been relocated therefrom one day before, many of them had been released. On May 2, the European delegation could drive in Tsentoroy without any obstacles.

Apparently, it was here that the relatives of the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria A.Mashadov had been held for half a year. They were forcibly taken away from their homes in unknown direction on December 3 and 28, 2004. Both the circumstances of this kidnapping and the evidence of the witnesses specified that the kidnappers were the “Kadyrovists”. With significant delay and after scandalous publicity, the Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated a criminal case on the fact of kidnapping. However, for more than six months there was no news regarding the fate of the kidnapped persons. On May 31, 2005, almost three months after Maskhadov's death, all the kidnapped relatives were released. According to the released persons, all this time they had been held all together in the concrete cell without any furniture, its floor space being three by three meters. Under the ceiling, there was a small grilled window. They had not been accused of anything or interrogated being allowed to leave the cell only to go to the bathroom. The kidnapped people noticed that the place where they had been held was located on rather big fenced territory. There were many armed people speaking mainly Chechen. On May 30, there came a person in civilian clothing to their cell and announced that they were free. The same day, for the first time in the course of five months, they were allowed to take a bath. Next morning, the kidnapped, with their eyes blindfolded, were taken home. On July 27, 2005, the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation N.I. Shepel declared,[1] that “Maskhadov's relatives were set free as a result of a special operation”. At the same time, he said that “the kidnappers had not been identified”. The investigation of the criminal case on the fact of kidnapping of seven relatives of Maskhadov was suspended due to “the impossibility to identify the persons to be held liable as accused of the kidnapping”.

 

There is a lot of evidence by the people saying that they themselves or their relatives were held in the illegal prison in Tsentsaroy and that the people there are exposed to tortures and beatings.

Illegal prisons exist in other places as well. Usually, these are the places where the of security structures units are deployed. At present, these are most often the structures referred to the so-called “Kadyrovists”.[2]

The quasi-legal detention place in the city of Groznyy, the so-called temporary isolator within the Bureau No 2 for Operative Investigation (ORB-2) should be noted separately. This is the detention facility for the suspects and persons on remand whose employees are holding operative work, inquest and investigation, although under the Russian legislation norms the temporary isolators can exist only within militia’s operating authority. In fact, this temporary isolator has become a specialized place where the persons on remand are transferred from SIZO to obtain by force the evidence needed by the investigators.[3]


[1]              At the conference devoted to the issue of “Strengthening of Law Enforcement Bodies for Maintaining Law and Order in the Chechen Republic” held in Kislovodsk on the initiative of the CE’s Commissar on Human Rights.

[2]              See the details in, for example, in the report by the Legal Rights Center of “Memorial” and the International Federation for Human Rights, “Torture in Chechnya: ‘Normalization’ of  a Nightmare”) from 2006.

[3]              For details, see the chapter “Issues of Tortures and Inhuman Treatment in Chechnya and Northern Caucuses” prepared by the Legal Rights Center of “Memorial” and Center of “Demos” to be found in the Russia’s NGOs’ Alternative Report on the RF Compliance with the UN Convention against Torture presented at the 37 session of the UN Committee against Torture in autumn 2006 (http://www.demos-center.ru/projects/6EE9B30/doklad).