December 25, 2001

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At 3 o'clock in the morning in the village of Gekhi, Russian servicemen in masks burst into a house (7 Budennogo St.). In one of the rooms they attacked Shamkhan Usamovich Khozkhadzhiev, who lived there. They twisted his hands behind his back and taped his mouth shut. The military did not introduce themselves or explain the reason why they came to this house, and they did not even ask Shamkhan for his documents. They just started beating him. Hearing noise in the house, Shamkhan’s sister Natalya, who was in the next room with two children, came out and saw several military men knocking her to the floor and beating her brother. She began to beg for them to stop the bullying: he is deaf and does not hear what they say to him. They pointed a gun at Natalya and demanded to show all the rooms in the yard. The frightened woman led the soldiers to the second house, located in the yard. Her second brother, Shahid Usamovich Khozkhadzhiev, born in 1975, lived there with his family. My brother opened the door, and the military immediately attacked him and began beating him, demanding that he give up some weapons. Natalya and Shahid's wife were taken to another room, where they were also required to hand over weapons allegedly stored in the house. The women replied that they did not have weapons and never had. The military began to wonder where the cartridges in the house came from. But the women also could not understand what cartridges they were talking about, since they had never seen them in their home. To which one of the military men said that he would take one of the brothers anyway.

When it became clear that Shahid was being detained, Natalya began to ask that he not be taken away. One of the soldiers replied that he also had a brother whom “you killed,” and added: “My wife says that all your women should be shot. But I can not. But if you call anyone from the neighbors or follow us, I’ll shoot you on the spot, like a dog.” After these words, the military took Shahid and left. Until the morning no one dared to leave the house. In the morning it became clear that the detainee was taken on foot to the road passing through the village. This was evident from the trail of blood.

After Shahid Khozkhadzhiev’s arrest, his relatives, trying to establish his whereabouts, turned to the security forces of the Urus-Martan district. Not a single law enforcement agency in the region admitted its involvement in the detention of Khozkhadzhiev.

On December 26, local residents discovered a corpse near the ponds of the Gorets state farm. He was identified - it was Shahid Usamovich Khozkhadzhiev. An eyewitness told his family that the military had brought him. Shahid showed signs of life for another 10-15 minutes - his body shuddered in convulsions. But by the time the military left and people approached him, he died.

The kidnappers and killers of Shahid Khozkhadzhiev were Russian. They did not present documents, so it is difficult to say about their departmental affiliation. This should have been the subject of an investigation. Unfortunately, it was practically not carried out. Based on the fact of the abduction, the prosecutor's office of the Urus-Martan district opened criminal case No. 25176, but subsequently suspended it according to the standard wording. The mother of the murdered man, Sepiyat Khozkhadzhieva, was recognized as a victim in this case only at the end of June 2005. Khozkhadzhiev’s relatives did not file a lawsuit against the inaction of the prosecutor’s office. They did not file a complaint with the ECHR.

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In Grozny, on Zhukovsky Street, a local resident, Lom-Ali Alikhanov, born in 1966, who lived at 6 Mikhailovskaya Street, was killed. He was shot in the head, presumably from a sniper rifle, at the moment when was on a regular bus traveling along route No. 29. The shot was fired just at the moment when the bus was approaching the checkpoint on Zhukovsky Street.

From the book “People Live Here”, Usam Baysaev, Dmitry Grushkin, 2006.