July 20, 2001

***
At three o'clock in the city of Urus-Martan, presumably, employees of the military commandant's office, having previously thrown a smoke bomb, broke into the house located at the address: Sportivnaya St., 92. They told the tenants who got out of bed that they had come for Magomed Khamidovich Vakhidov, born in 1945, who lives here. The reason for the arrest was not explained.

Already in the afternoon, the relatives of the abducted person turned to the local authorities with a request to inform where he was being held. But the prosecutor's office, the FSB district and the VOVD refused to acknowledge even the very fact of his detention. And although from the next day rumors spread around the city that Magomed Vakhidov was allegedly killed by employees of the Russian security forces, nothing was known about his fate for the next few days.

July 31 in the gardens of the state farm. Michurin to the east of the regional center found a corpse with signs of violent death. Employees of the prosecutor's office and the police transported him to the district hospital. The wife of Magomed Vakhidov was also called here, and she identified him as her husband. She was able to do this only in the teeth; the victim's face was severely burned, apparently with a blowtorch. There were knife wounds on the body, which was blue from electric shocks, and three bullet wounds were visible in the back.

In 1999, Magomed Vakhidov was the mayor of Urus-Martan and left for neighboring Ingushetia immediately after the outbreak of hostilities in the republic. In the early summer of 2000, he wrote to the head of the Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, asking for an amnesty. He was promised it. Considering that security was already guaranteed, he returned to his homeland, but was twice captured and released. The third time he was killed.

Due to the fact that he was the head of the city during the actual independence of Chechnya, relatives were afraid to complain later. None of them tried to force the prosecutor's office to find and punish the perpetrators of extrajudicial execution.

***
At about four o'clock in the city of Grozny, Yusup Muradov was taken away from his apartment at 140 Pugacheva St., apt. 4. On the same morning, Timur was captured along with him (his name and residential address of Memorial HRC are unknown). On an armored personnel carrier without a tail number, they were taken to Solyona Balka on the outskirts of the town of Ivanovo, where the 21st Sofrinskaya OBRON of the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation is stationed, and kept during the whole daylight hours. The release became possible due to the active actions taken by neighbors and relatives. Demanding the release of the detained young people, in the morning they blocked the commandant's office of the Staropromyslovsky district and the highway leading from the northern regions of the republic to the city center.
In an interview given on August 7 in Ingushetia to an employee of the Memorial HRC, Yusup Muradov spoke about how he was treated by the military:

“I was in Grozny in my apartment. I was asleep. I woke up from the noise of breaking down the door, which the Russian military immediately burst into. They were wearing masks. It was at four o'clock in the morning. I didn’t even have time to get out of bed when they pointed a machine gun at me. Then they dragged me to the floor, laid me face down and handcuffed me. Then they put us in an armored personnel carrier, which had no numbers, and took us to Solyonaya Balka, where, as we knew, there were soldiers from Sofrino. This is the suburbs. In the people they are considered punishers.

With me was another guy named Timur. He was taken to another room, and for some time I was alone in the room. My eyes were tied. Then several people entered the room. They started beating me and interrogating me. They demanded that I tell who puts the land mines, which of the combatants I know. In general, they wanted to get information. After me, they went to Timur's room and did the same with him.

So, one by one, they beat us for more than an hour. They beat me all over my body with either feet or fists. After some time, they stopped beating, apparently tired. We were dragged to a gym-like building and thrown there. The blindfolds on our eyes slipped, and we saw sports equipment: dumbbells, barbells, etc. We were bruised and bruised.

I don't know how much time passed, but we were taken out into the yard. Some military man came up to us and said that everything would be fine and that we would be taken to the commandant's office. Indeed, we were both put in a UAZ car and taken there. We were recorded there: surname and other data. Then they told us that we were free and took us out of the commandant's office to the street. A crowd of people was waiting for us on the street: relatives and all the neighbors who came and demanded our release. We were sick, we were taken home. The next day I came to Nazran to my sister and rested up for two weeks. It was difficult to breathe, to move. Now my kidneys hurt. Otherwise, health has already been restored.

***
In the village of Sernovodsk and the village of Assinovskaya, “cleansing operations” began, which ended only the next day. In the first of these settlements, the Russian military detained two people, in the second - six.

Interestingly, the day before in Sernovodsk, relatives of people who disappeared during the previous operation in this village blocked the building of the local administration and demanded their release. General Ibragim Suleimenov arrived to meet with them, acting. military commandant of the Achkhoy-Martan district. He did not promise to find and release the detainees, he asked only for three days to get acquainted with the circumstances of the case. And the next morning, "cleansing operations" began in two neighboring settlements.

***
Between 10 and 11 o'clock from Mogilevskaya street in the village of Chernoreche, armed people in masks and camouflage uniforms, presumably, employees of the GRU MO RF from among the Chechens, took away three people in an unknown direction. During the arrest of one of them, a woman was beaten with rifle butts. Trying to prevent her son from being taken away, she clung to him, which caused irritation among the kidnappers.

***
At 11.15 in Grozny on Zhukovsky street near the bus stop "Banya" events occurred that led to the death and injury of several people. The reason for everything, according to eyewitnesses, was the military. While driving a Ural truck, they threw something out of the body into the air, after which there was a powerful explosion. Two women were injured - SURSAD workers, who were in close proximity to the scene. The resulting commotion led to an accident, several cars collided. One of them crashed, hitting a pole standing on the side of the road. A total of seven people were injured during the incident:
1. Zina Serganova, born in 1960, Grozny, Tukhachevsky st., 91;
2. Mansur Serganov, born in 1982, Grozny, Tukhachevsky st., 91;
3. Adam Abuyazidov, born in 1953, village of Staraya Sunzha, Okruzhnaya st., 66;
4. Mayset Abuyazidova, born in 1952;
5. D. Dzhamulaeva, born in 1958;
6. Zulpa Nurdievna Kurbanova, Alkhan-Kala village, Nuradilova st., 24;
7. Tamara Askhabova, Alkhan-Kala village, Sheripov st., 27
A week later, in the hospital, Z. Kurbanova died from her wounds. A criminal case was initiated on this fact, but neither the relatives of the deceased, nor the HRC "Memorial" know anything about the progress of the investigation.

***
At about noon on Saykhanov Street in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny, a Niva car blew up on a land mine buried in gravel. As a result of this, three people received shrapnel wounds: the driver Khamid Atabaev, born in 1959, who lives in the city on Pervomaiskaya St., and Adlan Alievich Mitaev, born in 1956, a native of the Urus-Martan District (Goyty village, Kirova St., 59). Another passenger of the car, a local resident Sharani Askhabov, born in 1952, was taken to city hospital No. 9 with a severe head injury.

***
According to local residents, for about two weeks in a row at the same time - at about 11.30 pm at night - households located near the Beryozka bus stop in the Staropromyslovsky district of Grozny have been attacked. Unidentified people in camouflage uniforms and masks break down doors and take things of at least some value from houses.

***
At about 1 pm in the village of Chiri-Yurt, during a “cleansing operation”, Idris Khusainovich Suleymanov, born in 1977, was wounded and then found dead. After checking the documents in his house (Lenin St., 17), he went down to the river to swim. After some time, the sounds of shots were heard from there. After 10-15 minutes, a relative who decided to follow him saw that a young man was lying wounded, and military men were standing nearby. Calling out, they forced him to lie down on the ground as well, but then let him go.

However, he managed to establish that Idris Suleimanov was wounded quite lightly: the bullet passed near the left leg (slightly singeing it) and right through the right one. He was conscious. The military decided to take him to the infirmary at the commandant's office, located near the cement plant in the upper part of Chiri-Yurt. Relatives agreed with this, believing that care was better there and, unlike the local hospital, all the necessary medicines were available.

Until 15:00, Idris Suleymanov was indeed there. One of the officers allowed his sister to come before him. Saying that he was wounded in the leg and that it was not terrible, he asked his mother to calm down, said that the military would sort everything out and soon let him go. According to another version, a local doctor named Masoud discovered that not only the legs, but also the liver were affected in the young man. He warned of the need to provide him with emergency operational assistance. But the military did not listen to him. The next day, the women who came to see Suleymanov were informed that they had transported the wounded man to the city of Shali. And after some time, refusing to hand over the body, they informed the male relatives of his death.

Idris Suleymanov was discovered on the third day not far from the commandant's office. Local residents, who examined his body, recorded numerous signs of beatings and torture: there were traces of dog bites and some kind of injections on him, his nose was broken and turned to the side. Before burial, they filmed the corpse.

Trying to evade responsibility for what they had done, representatives of the commandant's office told the relatives of the dead man that they allegedly found lists with a list of "some kind of ammunition" in his pocket.

***
At 15 o'clock, near the village of Gikalovsky, unknown people blew up an infantry fighting vehicle with a landmine; there are wounded among the soldiers. On the same day, the village of Chechen-Aul was fired from tank guns, houses were damaged, and there were wounded among the local residents. The fire was fired from the side of the checkpoint near the village of Prigorodnoye and from the village of Khankala.

***
By order No. 329 of the head of the administration of the Urus-Martan district, a working group of 17 people was created to return to the places of permanent residence of the inhabitants of the district, who since the beginning of the war settled in tent camps on the territory of neighboring Ingushetia.

After a briefing by representatives of the Republican Committee for Refugees and Forced Migrants, this group went to the Sputnik camp on the outskirts of the Ordzhonikidzevskaya station. Representatives of the administration of the Urus-Martan district also arrived there.

Refugees met people from Chechnya with hostility: they blamed the Russian leadership, the military and those who cooperate with them inside the republic for all their troubles. Threats and insults were addressed to the arrivals, as well as a demand to leave the camp. Having tightly surrounded the bus with representatives of the Urus-Martan district and holding photographs of the mutilated corpses of the killed people, the refugees held a rally at which calls were made to return the legally elected president Aslan Maskhadov to power. The event was filmed by foreign journalists.

The delegation was forced to leave the Sputnik camp. The task set before her - to re-register refugees who arrived in Ingushetia from the villages of their region - she did not manage to fulfill.

At the end of June, internally displaced persons from Chechnya made a collective appeal to the State Duma of the Russian Federation, in which they tried to talk about the pressure exerted on them in order to force them to return to their homeland and about the motives for their unwillingness to do so at this time. It was signed by residents of both tent camps and places of compact residence of Chechen refugees, but it is not known whether it reached the addressee.

***
At about 17:00 on the outskirts of the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, 25-year-old local resident Amkhad Kaisarov was wounded. The Russian military stopped him and, holding out a grenade, demanded that he take it. Refused, they opened fire.
The wounded Amkhad Kaisarov was taken first to the military commandant's office and only then to the hospital.

From the book "People Live Here", Usam Baisaev, Dmitry Grushkin, 2006