Two Natives of the North Caucasus Federal District Detained on Charges of Participation in Shamil Basayev's Detachment
Law enforcement officers in the Tver and Vladimir regions detained Khamidulla Yapov and Minkail Magamadov. They are accused of attacks on Russian military personnel as part of the detachments of field commanders Shamil Basayev and Khattab in Chechnya in 1999 and 2000 during the Second Russian-Chechen War. This was reported by the Russian Investigative Committee.
According to investigators, Yapov participated in an attack on security forces on October 4, 1999, near the village of Chervlennaya in the Shelkovsky District. Magamadov was part of a detachment during an attack on servicemen of the Pskov Division of the Russian Airborne Troops, which took place on February 29, 2000, near the village of Ulus-Kert. As a result, a total of 99 Russian servicemen were killed and another 32 were injured.
Yapov and Magamadov have been charged under articles on armed rebellion, participation in a gang, and attempts on the lives of military personnel.
As human rights activists from Memorial have previously noted, "standard" testimonies of relatives of Russian military personnel as witnesses are presented in almost all criminal cases that have been opened against natives of Chechnya. Witnesses most often repeat the official version in a carbon copy.
