People keep missing during “special operations” in ChechnyaRuslan Isayev, North Caucasus - People keep missing during so-called “targeted” mopping-up operations in Chechnya. Most of them are civilians.
On Monday December 16, during a special operation by the Russian military in the village of Starye Atagi, five young men living in the village were arrested. Their relatives have been unable to find their whereabouts since.
The detainees seem to have been heavily beaten up and then transported to the outskirts of the village into the territory of a former farm where some troops of the federal military are located. But the relatives of the detainees were told that the federal troops had carried no special operation in Starye Atagi and that nobody was kept in custody.
The relatives were directed to Khankala but even there they were unable to find the detainees. No force structure admits arresting the five men from Starye Atagi. With every day passing on the chance of discovering them alive is diminishing.
The same happened with four inhabitants of the village of Samashki in the Achkhoi-Martan district. During the holidays after the end of Ramadan, the four were arrested in the street by soldiers who drove into the village and then took them away in an unknown direction.
On December 16, the body of Isa Makhamayev, who was arrested with the four men, was found in the outskirts of the village. The corpse had many marks of heavy torture. The fate of the other men remains unknown.
One day before the body was found, 23-year-old Rustam Avturkhanov was taken away by Russian soldiers in the vilage of Katayama in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny. He has not been seen ever since and his tracks cannot be regained. A total of 17 men have disappeared this way in the village of Katayama over the past six months.
(J/T) RELATED ARTICLES:
· New cases of Chechens "missing in detention"
· Chechen Military Prosecutor's Office creates special group for search for disappeared persons (PW, 10-12-2002)
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