Human Rights Center "Memorial"

How People in Chechnya "Disappear"

1. Testimony on the circumstances of the death of Saikhan Askhabov, whose body was uncovered in February of 2001 in the dacha village at the Russian army base in Khankala, and of the disappearances of three other citizens of the village Alkhan-Kala.

"The 'cleansings' at Alkhan-Kala started on August 13. That day a few soldiers entered my house, checked our passports and then left. The next morning about 15 servicemen drove up to our house in an armored personnel carrier. They began a search of the house. Didn't find anything. Then told me: 'Come with us. We'll interrogate you at the commandant's office, and then let you go.' They didn't explain why they were taking me away.

They threw me in the basement of the Alkhan-Kala commandant's office (a large private house on the village outskirts). There were already about 30-40 people there.

On the same day they took me and seven other detainees by helicopter to Khankala. Before this time they never conducted any interrogation.

As we got off the helicopter in Khankala we were beaten immediately with the butts of machineguns on arms and legs. We were hounded by dogs. They beat us probably a half an hour. Then they led us to the pit, which was 4 meters deep and 2 by 2 meters across, and lowered all eight of us into it with a wooden staircase which they then took away.

Besides me, it turned out that there were 6 permanent residents of Alkhan-Kala, one who was Russian, working at a townmember's house, and one resident of Alkhan-Yurt in the pit.

The top of the pit was covered with a grating made of planks. At night they covered it with some sort of heavy solid screen.

The pit was too crowded for us to lie down. And that wasn't even the issue - the ground was very damp. The soldiers asked us from above: 'Does anyone have tuberculosis?' We answered – 'No.' – 'Now you will!' And they poured some sort of dirty water on top of us. Besides that, they threw stones at us. They shouted at us: 'We don't care who you are - Gantemirovs or Barayevs. We'll kill all of you!'

At night for amusement the guards would throw smoke bombs and tear gas cylinders into the pit.

They fed us with army bread and lowered water in bottles. At one point they didn't give us water for two days.

They pulled us one by one out of the pit for interrogations. They led the interrogations right on the field where the army subdivisions drill (then one of the soldiers told us that they were from the special division of the Ministry of the Interior "Rus"). On the ground stood a wooden table, and the interrogated had to kneel before it; hands on the table, eyes blindfolded (they blindfolded us with a shirt as soon as they pulled us out of the pit). Soldiers surrounded us on all sides, one asked the questions, the others did the beating. They hit our kidneys, head, face, basically the whole body. I was questioned like this three times. The break between questionings was three days.

They asked us the following questions - where are the fighters, 'vakhabity', who sets the landmines, how much do they pay for a planned explosion, who is the commander, whether we'll cooperate with them, etc. They demanded a signed confession of us that we had served as fighters.

One of the guys with us had cardiac problems. So when they threw the smoke bombs into the pit he got really sick. We started to yell that a man was dying. So they dragged him out and never returned him. Later I found out that they drove him back to the village of Michurin on the outskirts of Grozny in an army truck and threw him out there. He managed to reach some apartment buildings and survived. Aside from him, also in the pit with us was a resident of the town Yandi (Orekhovo) named Saikhan Askhabov, who was also like me living as a refugee with relatives in Alkhan-Kala. He was in very bad shape. They beat him up really bad at the commandant's in Alkhan-Kala. We heard him screaming. He told us later that they tortured him with electric current with the handle of a spade on his back, legs and heels. When losing his consciousness, they brought him back to his senses drenching him with water, and then continued to torture him. They beat him because they found from someone a photo of a group of soldiers, and thought he was one of them. He told them that the photo was of someone else who only resembled him. But in general he had fought in the first war. And they got a confession out of him saying he was a fighter.

They brought Askhabov for questioning one time. They probably didn't beat him again because he was already so injured. But they hung him by the neck, and he immediately lost consciousness. They didn't make him answer any more questions.

Somewhere on the fifth day at 9 or 10 at night three men peered in at us from the top of the pit and asked: 'Is there a Saikhan Askhabov there?' – 'Yes - me.' Then they laughed: 'We're from the committee on human rights and have come to take up your case.' They lifted him from the pit and we never saw Askhabov again. In 15 to 20 minutes we heard yells.

In about two days after that, they moved the remaining six of us from the pit to some sort of bunker. From there they continued to take them out for questionings.

After one week they called for me, blindfolded me, sat me in a car and drove me to Alkhan-Kala. It turned out that my relatives had paid my ransom for 14 thousand rubles.

In this way three others were ransomed, too. But the other four disappeared. None of them returned home."

They are:

Avtaev, Ibragim, resident of Alkhan-Kala, born 1968. They demanded that he confess to concealing a soldier at his house and helping him run away during the "cleansing" operations.

Arsakaev, Magomed, about 40 years old, lived on Kirov street. Was detained due to his Kazakh residency and registration. He had moved here from with his mothers, who had moved in with him at the start of the war (she didn't want to stay there anymore, and Magomed was bringing her home), and he himself should have returned to Alma-Ata in several days.

Lukinykh, Yevgeny, Russian, about 42 years old, had been hired to work for a resident of Alkhan-Kala.

Askhabov, Saikhan, His body was identified later, at the end of February, amongst the corpses found at the dacha village at Khankala.

"A friend and I were rounded up on December 10, 2000 on the road from Raduzhnoye to Pobedinskoye approaching 9 p.m. We were driving a passenger car and were hoping to get home before the curfew but we didn't manage. On the way we were met by a brigade of soldiers in Ural trucks and armored personnel carriers. They immediately started firing at us. We stopped and were approached by the soldiers. They searched the car then threw us into the Ural and started to beat us. Up to this time they hadn't accused us of anything. They just beat us up, without any reason. During all of this they yelled at us using the most offensive language possible.

The brigade stayed on the road about 30 more minutes. During that time they threw two more people into the Ural with us. Then the brigade moved out, and drove all night long, first here, then there, and so on. At the village of Pervomaiskaya they collected two more guys. That made six of us.

From Pervomaiskaya we drove towards Grozny. When we entered the city it was already dawn. They blindfolded us. Then we drove again. Finally the vehicles stopped, and they dropped us off and threw us all into two pits. The pit that we wound up in was about three meters deep, and one and a half by one and a half meters across. They had tied our hands. Then they dragged us out one by one, led us to a tent, and interrogated us. They asked whether we knew any figthers, what we were doing on the road, and threatened us. We spent about a day in the pit.

Then they pulled the five of us out and drove us somewhere else.

We went maybe five or ten kilometers. They drove us for about a half hour, but with stops. Maybe we just circled around in one place. Finally they dropped us off. At this place you could here the constant take-off and landing of helicopters.

Here there was an underground prison. On the entrance which led downwards stood a tent. Underground was sectioned off into compartments. Our eyes were blindfolded the whole time, but we could talk to eachother. We found out that three people from Alkhan-Yurt were there also: brothers Ramzan and Rustam, and their villagemate Tasu.

Rustam said that he and his younger brother had been taken from home. He was in bad shape and spoke with difficulty. He said that they had tortured him with electrical current. I think the next day they drove those three somewhere else.

But Salekh was still there. I don't know where he's from. He was beaten up very badly.

They didn't give us any food. Light filtered through only very weakly. We could hardly differentiate day from night. The whole time we were there we heard the roar of helicopters.

While we were held there, two or three people died from torture. We didn't see it, but heard it. One groaned, even cried, although he didn't even have a voice left. The other cried out loudly for water. And quickly got silent, after that we heard the soldiers say: 'We have to carry out the corpses.'

Someone else's leg had been stabbed with a dagger. He had scarcely a voice left, he was getting gangrene.

We were lucky. They let us out two days later. Dropped us off on the road leading to Argun, and told us to wait untill they had left."