People continue to disappear in ChechnyaRuslan Isayev, North Caucasus – Russian forces keep detaining civilians in Chechnya and every day several people disappear. Men at the age between 14 and 45 are the most frequent victims of detentions after the command of the Unified Group of Federal Forces in the North Caucasus at the beginning of the current conflict issued an order identifying male Chechens of the age bracket as potential guerillas that should be closely checked.
In the early morning of July 7, Russian soldiers detained two brothers, Salman and Ramzan Baudinov, in the Prigorodnoye settlement, south west of the capital Grozny. Eyewitnesses claim that the operation resembled an assault with armoured vehicles breaking through the gate and soldiers with special police helmets destroying everything in their way, bursting into the house and forcing everybody there to lay on the floor. The brothers, who according to their neighbours had no connections with Chechen fighters, were forced to get into an armoured personnel carrier barefoot.
Then the soldiers got over the fence and handcuffed a 80-year-old neighbour, Mutalip Dashayev, in the porch of his house. He had to lie on the ground with his hands handcuffed for an hour before one of the servicemen released him saying: ”Why should we take the old man - he is too old”.
At dawn the relatives, the head of the Prigorodnoye administration and a district policeman began to search the detained brothers, but no results have been available so far. They have contacted the military headquarters in Khankala as well as the Federal Security Service (FSB) but everywhere they heard the same answer: ”We made no detentions”. At the moment, the relatives can hope for one thing only, namely that the kidnappers would require ransom.
Such operations obviously turn Chechen civilians against federal soldiers and make the end of the war more unlikely to come soon. In spring several hundred people up to the age of 25 reinforced the groups of Chechen fighters in the mountains in southern Chechnya. The number of such reinforcements is rising. And they were such "new recruits" who participated in a coordinated attack against several stations of federal forces in the Urus-Martan district a couple of weeks ago.
(M/T) |
