Mop-up in NazranBy Umalt Chadayev
NAZRAN, Ingushetia – Members of the Russian law enforcement agencies are conducting a so-called "passport verification check” in a street in the city of Nazran in Ingushetia, Prague Watchdog’s correspondent has been told by the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Internally Displaced Persons.
According to the organization’s head, Aslambek Apayev, who is also the Moscow Helsinki Group’s North Caucasus expert, a "mop-up” is going on on Tutayev Street, very close to the city centre.
“At about 4pm local residents approached us and told us that members of the law enforcement agencies arrived in several Gazelle minibuses, blocked off the neighbourhood, and conducted a so-called "mop-up”. They said that almost all the law enforcers wore masks, but people are convinced that this operation is being conducted by the federal structures, as they say that one or two of the soldiers didn’t have masks and were ‘people of Slavic ethnicity’," Apayev says.
"Our colleagues went to the scene, but no one was being allowed access. In the vicinity of Tutayev Street there were men in camouflage uniforms and masks with assault rifles and sub-machine guns, and they were preventing anyone from going to the area where the “mop-up” was in progress. People were very frightened, especially the women.”
"Local residents say there has recently been an increase in so-called “special operations” and other actions in Ingushetia. They are very worried about it,” the human rights defender said.
Representatives of other NGOs in Chechnya and Ingushetia also report of an increase in such incidents. According to the Information Centre of the Council of Non-Governmental Organizations (SNO), this past May the Russian military and local law enforcers conducted at least nine different “special operations” in the Chechen Republic. In Ingushetia there were six incidents of this kind over the same period.
(D/T) RELATED ARTICLES:
· "Mop-ups" are back in Chechnya and Ingushetia (PW, 8.5.2007)
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