New cases of Chechens "missing in detention"Ruslan Isayev, North Caucasus – Russian special services recently detained Umar Amayev, a resident of Grozny. His wife said that Umar is a professional photographer with 20 years' work experience and press photographer of „Vesti Groznogo“, which is published for the inhabitants of the Chechen capital.
Umar was detained on August 11 when working in his studio in Grozny. Four people, namely two plain-clothes and two uniformed men, asked him to follow them, claiming that he had allegedly taken photographs of someone, and seized all his negatives, photographs and camera.
Starting from that moment, none of Umar’s relatives and friends have ever seen him. A Russian officer, who requested anonymity, told the relatives that Umar had been kept in a cellar of the military headquarters in the Leninski district of Grozny and then he had been transported to the Khankala military base. To date nothing else has been found out about the fate of Umar Amayev.
On August 21, in the town of Urus-Martan, Russian servicemen detained a resident of the Goiskoye village, Said-Khussein Itslayev. The soldiers stopped the car by which Said and his brother Dokka were going. During a search, a photograph of a person in uniform was secretly thrown into the car. Subsequently, the photograph served as the reason for Said’s detention. At present his relatives are not able to find his whereabouts. His trace has disappeared at the local military headquarters.
Said’s brother Dokka is the head of the Urus-Martan branch of human rights centre Memorial. Curiously, roughly a your ago Memorial’s office in Ingushetia was informed that force structures operating in Chechnya might attempt on his life. For security reasons Dokka left for Ingushetia for a month. Only after the leadership of Memorial turned to the Chechen Prosecutor’s Office, the situation normalised and Dokka returned to his work. (T) |
