Another mopping-up operation in Starye and Novye Atagi - frequency and brutality increasesRuslan Isayev, North Caucasus - On March 7 the villages of Starye and Novye Atagi were blocked again by the Russian military. Limitations have been imposed on the transport and movement of people and a so called "mopping-up" operation has been launched, a fourth one in the last two monts.
The "mopping-up" operation was launched after a dead body of a Russian serviceman had been found on the edge of Starye Atagi. There were no wounds caused by a knife or gun on his body and the man seemed to have died of cruel beating.
On the night before the body was discovered, eyewitnesses saw a group of Russian servicemen at a check-point beating to death a soldier and then throwing him dead on the edge of the village.
Many cases of human rights abuses have been reported in the villages. Russian soldiers allegedly looted houses, beat civilians, demanded money and jewellery.
On March 9 the mopping-up operation in Starye Atagi was ended. During the so-called control of passport regime, 63 local inhabitants were detained on the suspicion of belonging to Chechen armed formations. All detained were kept at a poultry farm in the western part of the village.
On March 10, the relatives of the detained gathered in the village and, as a result, 52 of the detained were released. Eleven corpses bearing signs of torture and ill-treatment were handed over to the crowd, several of those were decapitated. All killed were between 18 and 40 years of age.
In the recent months the number and brutality of mopping-up operations has increased. While earlier almost all individuals were controlled, their possible connection to the Chechen guerilla was checked, criminal proceedings were initiated, and investigation conducted, the detained now rarely make it to the prosecutor’s office and are simply killed as nobody is accountable for the arbitrariness of the soldiers’ conduct.
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