Human Rights Center "Memorial"

Set out below is a summary of several examples of the many occasions in May 2002 where order No. 80 of the OGV(s) Commander has been deliberately flouted.

During a special operation in the night from 13 to 14 May, Russian troops took away the following six local people from the village of Krasnostepnovskoye in the Grozny region:

At 2.30am, people were awoken by a sudden invasion of masked men in camouflage, speaking Russian.

When Bitsalov was arrested, his relatives heard the federal troops talking on a walkie-talkie and being referred to by the codename "Gepard" ["cheetah" in Russian].

The troops behaved disgustingly during the special operation. They punched and swore at men and women alike. The Karievs' mother had four teeth knocked out. Another woman was hit over the head with the butt of a gun and suffered a fractured skull.

The arrested men were shoved into a UAZ truck and taken off to the edge of the village where some armoured personnel carriers (APCs) were parked. After the arrests, the APCs and the UAZ headed towards Grozny. People living in Krasnostepnovsky and the neighbouring village of Oktyyabr'skoye counted five vehicles.

At first light, local people rushed to the military sub-divisionary quarters which, on 13 May, were on a hill above the village. They tried to find out whether soldiers from that sub-division had had any involvement in the special operation the previous night in Krasnostepnovskoye. However, there they were told that that sub-division had carried out no special operations whatsoever in the village and that the most likely explanation was that it was a faked attack by rebel fighters.

Relatives of those who had been arrested travelled into Grozny, where they lodged statements with the public prosecutor's offices (both the regional and the military offices) and with the office of the commandant for the Chechen Republic.

On the evening of 14 May, several APCs again drove up to the village. The numbers on their sides had been covered with canvas. According to local people, Rustam Kariev suddenly emerged from the turret of one of the armoured cars. He only managed to ask for help before being shoved back inside. The APCs drove off in a hurry.

A group of people from the village again went quickly to see the command of the military group still based for a second day running on a hill above the village. They asked that the APCs which had driven into the village be stopped. One of the soldiers, who introduced himself as General Sobolev, ordered a group of troops and police to drive out to the village. They managed to stop one of the APCs (with its numbers covered up with canvas) in the village and questioned its commander. Afterwards, the APC left the village without being stopped again.

The locals received an undertaking that all information concerning this APC would be given to the Grozny regional internal affairs department.

On 15 and 16 May they continued to make enquiries to every possible authority. However, nevertheless, no one told them which investigator was running their case and no one went to the village to interview witnesses or to inspect the place where the events had taken place.

On the evening of 16 May the head of the village administration for Novy Engena in the Gudermes region brought Uvais Kagermanov and Aslan Kariev back to Krasnostepnovskoye. The troops had dumped them near his village.

Both had been so badly beaten that they had to be sent straight to the hospital. They had no documents. According to Kagermanov and Kariev, they had been kept blindfolded the whole time in some kind of cellar. They had been able to hear the voices of the other people who had been arrested. There had been beatings during interrogations.

As at the end of May, there was no news as to the fate of the others who had disappeared.

The military sub-division which deployed on the hill above the village on 13 May, pulled out on 19 May.

On 14 May 2002, federal troops carried out a special operation in the village of Goy-chu (formerly Komsomolskoye) in the Urus-Martan region. They were checking people's registrations and searching for rebel fighters. These kinds of operation are called "mopping-up" operations.

The village was sealed off by armoured vehicles from early morning. At the fork in the road a kilometre to the north of the village, a mobile checkpoint was set up. People were allowed to travel into the village if they were registered there, but no one was allowed to leave. On the eastern edge of the village, where there used to be a dairy farm (the Michurin Dairy Farm No. 1), a temporary mobile federal command post was set up.

Troops taking part in the "mopping-up" included, in addition to interior ministry troops, soldiers from the FSB, the GRU, the military commandant's office, the temporary interior affairs department, as well as troops from the regional commandant's company. According to some reports, the deputy public prosecutor for the region was also in the village during the special operation. The head of the village administration (temporarily located in the town of Urus-Martan) was not informed about the operation and only found out about the "mopping-up" several hours after it had begun.

The soldiers confiscated all the men's passports and sent them to a temporary "filtration" point to fingerprint them and to check them against a computerised database.

The federal troops who carried out the "mopping-up" did not identify themselves and did not present any documents attesting to the legitimacy of their actions. No numbers were visible on the armoured vehicles.

A special operation (a so-called "mopping-up"), to check people's registrations and to find rebel fighters, was carried out by federal troops in the village of Avtury in the Shalinsky region from 14 to 20 May.

The village was sealed off early on the morning of 14 May. The soldiers set up camp near the local police station (the "POM"), setting up tents and drawing up trailers. A temporary "filtration" point was also set up in the same place. General I.B. Bronitsky was in charge of the preparation and execution of the whole operation. The 71^st regiment cordoned off the village. Inside the village, interior ministry and FSB troops carried out the operation.

During the special operation, which lasted seven days, Order No. 80 of the OGV(s) Commander, was repeatedly ignored or cynically breached.

For example, no religious leaders or elders from the village were allowed witness the operation as observers. When the head of the local administration referred Bronitsky to this point in the Order, Bronitsky's response was that he was just acting in accordance with the Order.

The military prosecutor, a colonel, who was supposed to be present at the "mopping-up", spent the whole time at the headquarters and never appeared in the village. There were no representatives of the civil public prosecutor's office present. All identification numbers on the sides and the turrets of the armoured vehicles had been obscured; they had been smeared with mud or had canvas hung over them. A lot of people have commented that the soldiers did not wear masks to hide their faces.

The searches that were carried out of private homes were also in breach of Order No. 80. The senior officers of the search parties failed to identify themselves to homeowners and did not explain the reason for the search. The behaviour of different groups of soldiers varied. Those conducting the morning searches were polite and well behaved (locals think these were normal conscripts) whereas those who searched in the afternoon were almost all drunk and behaved disgustingly.

People were arrested during the "mopping-up" and were taken to the "filtration" centre to check whether they were members of the Chechen rebel army. The detainees were held in prison vans (vehicles for transporting prisoners). Reports say that between 40 and 47 people from Avtury were processed through the "filtration" centre and about half a dozen people from the neighbouring village of Geldagan in the Kurchaloevsky region.

According to locals, all those arrested (with the exception of two people who were ill and disabled) were beaten and tortured. Methods of torture included using electric current; leads were attached to the little fingers, ear lobes and ankles of the prisoners. Prisoners were asked to name villagers connected to rebel fighters and "vahabis" and were pressured to work secretly for the army. They were also made to sign blank pieces of paper. Even where there was a text on the paper, the prisoners were unable to read it, as they were not given enough time.

Officers joined in the beating and torture. One of them, a colonel, was described by one of the victims as "particularly savage". The screams of the victims could be heard from a long way away and there is no way that they could not have been heard by the military prosecutor who spent the whole time in the special operation headquarters, more or less next-door to the prisoners. However, he took no steps to restrain the excesses of the troops.

On 15 May, Ilyas Amarbekovich Shovkhalov (born 1980 and living on Arsanov street) was brought in to the "filtration" centre. According to witnesses who were with him, he was particularly savagely tortured and was in a very serious condition. Unable to bear the torture, he apparently "confessed" that there were weapons hidden in the yard by his house. It may be that he hoped, in this way, to get some relief from the torture and get out into the open so that his relatives could see that he was alive and try to have him freed. The soldiers promised to let him go if he showed them the location.

During 16 May, soldiers arrived at the Shovkhalovs' house. Having sealed it off, they made Ilyas dig in the yard. When no weapons were found, the soldiers announced that the house was going to be blown up and told the neighbours to move further away. A little later there was an explosion. After the soldiers had left, pieces of human remains were found in the yard. It was impossible to identify the victim, as the largest remaining fragment was a foot. However, the foot was still inside a sock which, according to Ilyas' wife, belonged to her husband.

The military prosecutor was informed. However, he took no steps to launch an immediate investigation of the soldiers' crimes. He did not inspect the site or the human remains. He did not send in an investigation team and did not launch a criminal investigation.

On 17 May, relatives buried the remains of the murdered man.

Soldiers later announced that weapons had, apparently, been found in the Shovkhalovs' yard. However, there is no mention of this in the document which was issued following the "mopping-up".

Five young men from the neighbouring village of Geldagan (see below) were brought to the "filtration" centre on 18 May. Geldagan is administered by the Kurchaloevsky region. No explanation was given as to why they were arrested.

Only after the "mopping-up" had finished did it transpire that three people from Avtury, who had been arrested on 14 and 15 May and who had been at the "filtration" centre, had vanished. They were: Kakhiev Khanpasha Khasanovich (from Kooperativnaya street 25, born 1968), Mezhidov Said-Ami Mukhadinovich (from Lenin street 149, born 1980) and Alisultanov Shamsudi Abazovich (from Tereshkovaya street, born 1968). No one who was involved in carrying out or running the "mopping-up" has been able to say where they are now. Locals believe they have been taken to Khankala.

The "mopping-up" was accompanied by looting. At least 50 complaints were made to the village administration by locals regarding thefts by soldiers. The actual number of people who were victims of looting by soldiers is much higher. However, many people are afraid to lodge complaints, and in any case think it is unlikely that those responsible will be punished.

The administration head passed on the Avtury locals' complaints to the military prosecutor. Military prosecutor Tereshuk sat at his command post and did not move from it. Instead of being present on the ground actually to stop the excesses and violence, he took it into consideration and tried to determine what had already happened.

Complaints were lodged only by those locals who had had valuable property (cars and generators, for example) stolen.

In relation to two generators, the prosecutor's response was that they were under investigation. The others were not returned and no explanation was given.

Soldiers also slaughtered three milk cows and several sheep.

For the final two days of the "clean-up", officers from the Shalinsky regional commandant's office were asked by the head of the local administration to mount a round-the-clock guard. This helped to some extent to halt the looting by the soldiers.

When the "clean-up" ended, the head of the administration was presented by Bronitsky's headquarters with a pro forma formal document which he was required to sign. Despite pressure and threats, the head of the administration refused to sign until statements had been included referring to the looting and disappearances.

On the night from 15 to 16 May federal troops carried out a so-called "targeted" special operation in the village of Alkhazurovo in the Urus-Martan region. During the operation, three men were arrested and taken away.

On Sheripova street, a group of soldiers burst in to number 23. The armoured vehicles in which they had arrived were left at the edge of the village and the soldiers went up to the house on foot. Without identifying themselves or explaining their reasons for being there, they arrested Magomadov Isa Vakhaevich (born 1962) and Magomadov Umar Vakhaevich (born 1978) and took them away to an unknown location.

The same night, at about the same time, on Titov street, a disabled man, Shamaev Alkhazur Aleksandrovich (born 1983), from house number 1, was taken away to an unknown location. Shamaev, who was from collective farm No. 15 in the Grozny region, had been living at number 1 temporarily. According to his relatives, he was arrested by soldiers wearing masks. A group of about 10 men broke into the house by taking the glass out of a window frame. When the soldiers appeared in the house, the women started screaming and calling for help, at which point the soldiers started hitting the women with the butts of their guns. Alkhazur Shamaev was so badly beaten that he lost consciousness and collapsed. He was taken away unconscious.

The following morning, the relatives of the Magomadovs and Shamaev went to the military commandant's office and to the Urus-Martan temporary regional interior affairs department. The department absolutely refused to acknowledge the involvement of its troops in the arrests. The relatives also filed a statement with the Urus-Martan regional public prosecutor's office.

Several days later, Isa and Umar Magomadov turned up unexpectedly back home. They had been set free. It transpired that they had been held all this time at the regional commandant's office.

As of 24 May, the whereabouts of Shamaev Alkhazur Aleksandrovich is still unknown.

On 18 May 2002 at 6.00pm, Russian soldiers drove into the village of Geldagan on Shkolnaya street. They were coming from the direction of the village of Avtury where a "clean-up" was taking place at the time (see above). The soldiers were in two APCs and a UAZ truck. The vehicles had no identification numbers. Most of the soldiers were wearing masks and were drunk. Having driven into the village, the soldiers opened fire randomly and continuously with machine-guns and machine-gun-mounted grenade launchers. They fired in all directions. One grenade landed in the yard of Ali Imbaev. His four-year-old son was playing on a swing in the yard at the time. He received shrapnel wounds to his leg from the explosion.

On Shkolnaya street, some young people were playing cards at Musikhanov Mairbek's house. When they heard the shooting, they ran and hid. Only Magomadov Mairbek Bakha-Khadzhievich (born 1980, living on Druzhba street) stayed where he was. One of the APCs stopped and the soldier sitting on top of it called the man over. When he approached, without saying a word, the soldier shot him twice with a Stechkin pistol (a weapon used by the special forces). Then the APC drove on, shooting in all directions.

Mairbek Magomadov was taken to the Kurchaloevsky regional hospital seriously wounded. He was put in an intensive care unit.

Then the soldiers sealed off an area in the centre of the village at the junction of Shkolnaya street and Tsentralnaya street and began arresting all the men they could find. They held them for about 30 minutes and then took away the following five people:

On their way, the soldiers shot up a bus full of passengers travelling in the direction of the village of Kurchala. Fortunately there were no injuries. Finally, finishing up their "jaunt", they broke into a store, the house of Derbisheva Liza (on Titov street) and the shop and home of Umaev Tavana (on Tsentral'naya street) in the centre of the village. They loaded up the APCs with valuables and goods and drove off in the direction of Avtury along the same street (Shkolnaya) they had come in on.

On 19 May at 9.00pm, Barsukov, the commandant of the Kurchaloevsky region, was told on his walkie-talkie from Avtury, that five men who had been arrested on 18 May in Geldagan had been released. On 20 May at 3.00pm, all of the detainees returned home to their native villages.