Taking Insurgents’ Relatives Hostage, Repressive Acts against Insurgents’ Relatives

Such methods of carrying out the “CTO” were used from the end of 2001. However, this practice became of systematic nature with the further development of the conflict “chechenization”. In 2004, with participation, support and cover up of the federal center, the earlier practiced sporadic cases of hostage taking, arsons and demolition of houses, murders and other forms of repressive actions in relation to the family members of suspected insurgents became systematic. If in former times, repressive actions in relation to the combatants’ families were either revenge or an attempt to obtain from the relatives information about the insurgents offering resistance; now these methods have become tactics to render pressure upon insurgents with the purpose to force them to surrender. The kidnappings described earlier, as well as keeping in illegal prisons of the relatives of Aslan Maskhadov is an element of this widespread practice and such examples are numerous.[1]

Prosecutions of insurgents’ relatives go beyond hostage taking practice. One of the most known recent cases of this kind is kidnapping and “disappearance” of Elina Ersenoyeva. On August 17, 2006, in the center of Groznyy, the employees of unestablished security structures kidnapped a 26-year-old Elina Ersenoyeva, employee of the non-profit-making organization of “Info-Bridge” and string correspondent of the newspaper Chechenskoye obshchestvo. About 9 o'clock in the morning, she was at the Pobeda boulevard together with her aunt Rovzan. Some unfamiliar persons in masks and camouflage approached the women. They frogmarched the women into different vehicles, put sacks onto their heads and took them away in unknown direction. After a while, they were taken off the vehicles and, with the sacks still on their heads, pushed into some cellar. Rovzan was soon again put into the vehicle, brought back to Groznyy and left in the middle of the street. That day Elina Ersenoyeva called her relatives twice by the cell phone and asked to not raise panic hoping that she would soon be released. However, Elina never came back home, while her phone stopped responding.

Two days before the kidnapping, Elina applied to the International Helsinki Federation and the Center of “Demos” with a request for help. She wrote that local security structures (“Kadyrovists”, as she specified) had been persecuting her and her family for some time and explained that this pressure was due to the fact that in November 2005 she had married a man who appeared to be an insurgent and who was killed in the summer of 2006. On August 23, it became known that Ersenoyeva was wife of Shamil Basayev ( the sources close to Elina say that the marriage was not voluntary). At the end of August 2006, the ChR Prosecutor’s Office initiated a criminal case on the fact of Ersenoyeva’s kidnapping. Elina’s whereabouts and fate have not yet been established.[2] According to informal sources, in the middle of October 2006 she was still alive and was held in one of the “secret” prisons.

Elina Ersenoyeva’s mother, Rita (Margarita) Ersenoyeva (born in 1958) took active efforts to find her daughter. Hoping that publicity would help to have her daughter released, Rita willingly met with Russian and western journalists and representatives of legal rights organizations. On October 2, 2006, Rita Ersenoyeva “disappeared” and there are strong reasons to suspect that she had been kidnapped. That day Rita came to see her mother Lipa Barzukayeva, 65, living in the village of Stary-Atagi, Mayskaya Street. There she got a mobile phone call. She said to her mother that it was the call from the “investigator” who had said that if she wanted “to learn good news” about her daughter Elina, she should immediately come to the village administration. 10 minutes later, Rita’s mother called her mobile phone but it was disconnected. After several attempts to contact her daughter, Barzukayeva asked a relative to go to the village administration where the latter was told that Rita did not come and nobody had invited her there. Since then, the family has no news from Rita Ersenoyeva and no information as to her whereabouts. Being afraid for their safety, the relatives did not inform the law enforcement bodies about this. When meeting in September with the representatives of the International Helsinki Federation and the Center of “Demos”, Rita Ersenoyeva mentioned some Suleyman Bakriyev, employee of the Groznyy District Department of the Ministry of Interior who threatened that “she would smart” for her talks with journalists and foreigners. Pressure was, in particular, due to the fact that in September Rita was questioned in connection with her daughter’s kidnapping by the members of the European Commission for Prevention of Tortures that visited Chechnya.[3]

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[1] The issue of hostage taking and reprisals in relation to the insurgents’ relatives is covered in the Report “Chechnya 2004: “New” Methods of Anti-Terror. Hostage Taking and Repressive Actions against Relatives of Alleged Combatants and Terrorists” prepared by the Legal Rights Center of “Memorial”

[2] For more details about Elina Ersenoyeva’s kidnapping see the Open Letter to the ChR Public Prosecutor by the Helsinki Federation, the International Federation for Human Rights and the Center of “Demos” from August 18, 2006 and an Annex to it from August 25, 2006. (http://www.demos-center.ru/projects/66D650D/7D16046/1160677528 and http://www.demos-center.ru/projects/66D650D/7D16046/1156516907).

[3] 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