Chechnya: Torture Prison Revelations
Russian campaigners say Chechen kidnap victims were subjected to brutal treatment at illegal detention centre.
Chechnya: Torture Prison Revelations
Russian campaigners say Chechen kidnap victims were subjected to brutal treatment at illegal detention centre.
The authorities are to launch an investigation into claims by human rights activists that the basement of a building used until recently by Russian interior ministry troops served as a torture centre.
But officials have already sought to downplay the allegations which appear to shed new light on the fate of hundreds people who have disappeared without trace.
Dozens of families of missing persons have descended on the premises in Grozny’s Octyabrskiy District - a former boarding school for deaf children - since the Russian human rights group Memorial claimed they had evidence that it had been used as an illegal detention centre, where detainees were subjected to brutal treatment.
Memorial conducted a search of the building soon after interior ministry troops vacated it on May 26, halting teams of demolition workers who had been assigned to pull down what had served as one of the centres of Russian anti-terror operations in Chechnya for the last six years.
The rights group said it spent three days examining the premises. In the basement, they found a photograph album of scores of detainees dating back to 2002 - with some of those featured apparently showing signs of having been beaten - and inscriptions they’d made on the walls indicating how long they’d been held.
In addition, Memorial has acquired first-hand accounts of the abusive treatment of the detainees. Alavdi Sadykov, one former prisoner who spoke to the rights group, likened the centre to Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp. He recalled that interior ministry operatives had set dogs on inmates; driven awls under their nails; and beaten them with sledgehammers. “Every day the detainees suffered atrocious tortures,” he said.
“We have no reason why we should not believe what Sadykov says,” said the head of Nazran office of Memorial, Shahman Akbulatov. “He himself went through hell in that basement. He was tortured there, and even had one ear cut off.”
The authorities have asked Memorial to hand over its evidence and have said they will investigate the case, although Chechnya’s chief prosecutor Valery Kuznetsov has insisted that it’s too early to draw any conclusions. He told Interfax on June 7 that the basement prison was a “temporary detention centre” and denied there was anything secret about it. “It’s premature and juridically incorrect to make any categorical inferences at this stage,” the news agency quoted him as saying.
The commissioner for human rights in Chechnya Nurdi Nukhazhiev sought to further downplay Memorial’s findings, saying that nothing serious had been discovered in the building. “There’s no evidence found [to indicate] that people were tortured and killed there,” Nukhazhiev told Interfax the same day.
In the minds of many Chechens, however, Memorial’s revelations confirmed their own suspicions that substantial numbers of those who’ve disappeared without trace over the years have been tortured to death in centres such as the one in Octyabrskiy District.
This year alone, the human rights group says 103 people have been abducted, 50 of whom were released, six found dead and 38 remain missing.
Since Memorial disclosed its findings about the Grozny centre, dozens of the relatives of people who’ve disappeared over the years have converged on the building hoping to find some clues as to the fate of their loved ones.
“This was a very painful sight,” said Grozny resident Seda Islamova, who tried to find out what had happened to her nephew missing since winter of 2001. “A damp basement divided into cells that were impervious to daylight. I saw inscriptions on the walls saying ‘Death to dukhi’ [the Russian slang for Chechen rebels].
“There were also inscriptions made by the detainees themselves. Next to the names of many of them were small lines that must have been drawn to mark the time they had spent in captivity. I was there for no more than ten minutes, but the time was enough for me to understand what a place of horror it was.”
Vahid Akuyev, a resident of Katayama on the outskirts of Grozny, told IWPR that locals had found evidence of similar detention centres in a neighbouring area called Solenaya Balka, from where Russian troops withdrew in mid May. He pointed out that the mutilated bodies of kidnap victims had been discovered in the vicinity several years before.
Referring to the Octyabrskiy District centre, he said, “A criminal case would have instituted in a normal state. Whereas here the guilty ones are being defended by a human rights commissioner…. The truth is necessary to prevent such atrocities from happening in future.”
Human rights activists say one of the members of the Octyabrskiy District interior ministry unit was lieutenant Sergei Lapin, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison last year for the brutal treatment of a Grozny resident Zelimkhan Murdalov. In January of 2001, a court found that Lapin savagely beat the young Chechen, whom he’d arrested arbitrarily, and took him, half dead, to an unknown place. Murdalov’s body has never been found.
Umalt Dudayev, the pseudonym of an independent journalist in Grozny, is a regular IWPR contributor.
But officials have already sought to downplay the allegations which appear to shed new light on the fate of hundreds people who have disappeared without trace.
Dozens of families of missing persons have descended on the premises in Grozny’s Octyabrskiy District - a former boarding school for deaf children - since the Russian human rights group Memorial claimed they had evidence that it had been used as an illegal detention centre, where detainees were subjected to brutal treatment.
Memorial conducted a search of the building soon after interior ministry troops vacated it on May 26, halting teams of demolition workers who had been assigned to pull down what had served as one of the centres of Russian anti-terror operations in Chechnya for the last six years.
The rights group said it spent three days examining the premises. In the basement, they found a photograph album of scores of detainees dating back to 2002 - with some of those featured apparently showing signs of having been beaten - and inscriptions they’d made on the walls indicating how long they’d been held.
In addition, Memorial has acquired first-hand accounts of the abusive treatment of the detainees. Alavdi Sadykov, one former prisoner who spoke to the rights group, likened the centre to Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp. He recalled that interior ministry operatives had set dogs on inmates; driven awls under their nails; and beaten them with sledgehammers. “Every day the detainees suffered atrocious tortures,” he said.
“We have no reason why we should not believe what Sadykov says,” said the head of Nazran office of Memorial, Shahman Akbulatov. “He himself went through hell in that basement. He was tortured there, and even had one ear cut off.”
The authorities have asked Memorial to hand over its evidence and have said they will investigate the case, although Chechnya’s chief prosecutor Valery Kuznetsov has insisted that it’s too early to draw any conclusions. He told Interfax on June 7 that the basement prison was a “temporary detention centre” and denied there was anything secret about it. “It’s premature and juridically incorrect to make any categorical inferences at this stage,” the news agency quoted him as saying.
The commissioner for human rights in Chechnya Nurdi Nukhazhiev sought to further downplay Memorial’s findings, saying that nothing serious had been discovered in the building. “There’s no evidence found [to indicate] that people were tortured and killed there,” Nukhazhiev told Interfax the same day.
In the minds of many Chechens, however, Memorial’s revelations confirmed their own suspicions that substantial numbers of those who’ve disappeared without trace over the years have been tortured to death in centres such as the one in Octyabrskiy District.
This year alone, the human rights group says 103 people have been abducted, 50 of whom were released, six found dead and 38 remain missing.
Since Memorial disclosed its findings about the Grozny centre, dozens of the relatives of people who’ve disappeared over the years have converged on the building hoping to find some clues as to the fate of their loved ones.
“This was a very painful sight,” said Grozny resident Seda Islamova, who tried to find out what had happened to her nephew missing since winter of 2001. “A damp basement divided into cells that were impervious to daylight. I saw inscriptions on the walls saying ‘Death to dukhi’ [the Russian slang for Chechen rebels].
“There were also inscriptions made by the detainees themselves. Next to the names of many of them were small lines that must have been drawn to mark the time they had spent in captivity. I was there for no more than ten minutes, but the time was enough for me to understand what a place of horror it was.”
Vahid Akuyev, a resident of Katayama on the outskirts of Grozny, told IWPR that locals had found evidence of similar detention centres in a neighbouring area called Solenaya Balka, from where Russian troops withdrew in mid May. He pointed out that the mutilated bodies of kidnap victims had been discovered in the vicinity several years before.
Referring to the Octyabrskiy District centre, he said, “A criminal case would have instituted in a normal state. Whereas here the guilty ones are being defended by a human rights commissioner…. The truth is necessary to prevent such atrocities from happening in future.”
Human rights activists say one of the members of the Octyabrskiy District interior ministry unit was lieutenant Sergei Lapin, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison last year for the brutal treatment of a Grozny resident Zelimkhan Murdalov. In January of 2001, a court found that Lapin savagely beat the young Chechen, whom he’d arrested arbitrarily, and took him, half dead, to an unknown place. Murdalov’s body has never been found.
Umalt Dudayev, the pseudonym of an independent journalist in Grozny, is a regular IWPR contributor.
