November 9, 2001

***
On the night of November 9 in the city of Argun, machine gun fire was heard in the area of Novaya and Zheleznodorozhnaya streets. Local residents did not pay much attention to the sounds of gunfire, since this often happens after dusk, but the events that unfolded further led to numerous civilian casualties. Around midnight, several trucks with Russian military personnel appeared on these streets (local residents claim at least 200 people). Soon the military left, but after some time, intense machine gun fire began near a small adobe house on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street. The spent cartridge casings flew through the window into the room where at that time a young woman with three young children and her husband were sleeping (their names, as well as the exact address, are not disclosed for the safety of the victims). The children huddled in the corner of the room out of fear, and the mother threw mattresses at them. And not in vain. A short time later, 15 Russian soldiers shot at the lantern at the gate and, knocking down the door, ran into the room. They put a gun to the side of the owner of the house and began to threaten to shoot him. At the same time, they claimed that they killed two people on the street, and threw a third, still alive, in the corridor.

The woman began to beg to save her husband’s life. When communicating with each other, the military called each other by their first and last names. One of them was Muslim. The woman turned to the man whom the others called Kurbanov, and, appealing to his religious feelings, asked him to intercede for her husband. Having admitted that he was a Bashkir, he interceded. After this, the military retreated from the owner of the house. The woman believes that her family owes their lives to Kurbanov.

But the military did not allow the children to be taken out of the house, they did not allow them to go to the toilet, and they endured until the morning. They managed it themselves right in the rooms.

Leaving the owner of the house, they set to work on the young man they had brought with them. Apparently, he had already been severely beaten: a large pool of blood remained in the corridor where he had been for a short time. They dragged him into the yard and began to beat him again. The woman heard the exclamations and cries of the military, and remembered one of the phrases especially well. Addressing the young man who was being beaten, they shouted: “We will make belts out of you!” And then, having mocked him to their heart's content, they fired three shots at him and left him to die in the yard.

Then they returned to the house. We walked from room to room, not paying attention to the owners. All things in the house were turned over and scattered. The kids were stepped on several times, one of whom had a broken leg. The Russian military barricaded all the windows in the house, and then went out into the courtyard again and dug trenches there. At this time, as well as later, no one fired in their direction or attempted to attack the house.

Having completed preparations, the military opened fire in different directions. It is unknown who they fought with. When examining the house the morning after the events described, there were no bullet holes on its walls, but there were marks left from the explosions of mortar shells. The fact is that half an hour after the shooting began, the military radioed for help, claiming that they were fighting surrounded and had already suffered heavy losses. As the woman understood, they demanded to open artillery fire on the square where they were now located. After a short time, mortar shelling began on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street and the adjacent residential areas of Argun. When one of the mines hit the house in which people were hiding, the military radioed and demanded that the fire be transferred. But the shells still continued to explode in the yard and around the house, touching the soldiers with shrapnel: some were slightly injured. They began injecting each other with promedol, leaving behind several used syringes. One of the servicemen tried to hide from the shrapnel under a KamAZ truck parked in the yard. But a shell exploded next to the car, fragments pierced the wheels, and the car, settling on the ground, crushed the soldier.

Angered by the death of their comrade, the military approached the man they had tortured and discovered that he was still alive. Lifting him from the ground, they dragged him to the gate and there, despite the woman’s pleas, they shot him in the ear. In the morning, at this place, the woman discovered forks, which the military had taken out of the house before her eyes. There were traces of blood on their teeth. It also turned out that the phalanges of the fingers of the young man tortured by the Russian military were cut off. The dead man was wearing sports trousers and pointed galoshes on his feet.

The military left the house on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street only in the morning. All this time they abused the woman living there and her family. After they left, a large number of spent cartridges, used syringes and a homemade knife were left in the rooms.

The military were apparently kept secret in this house. According to local residents, at least two of them were posted in the city that night. Local resident Vaduev stumbled upon the same secret in Stepnoy Lane. He was walking to his neighbors when he was stopped by the military. He was beaten all night and released only in the morning. Probably, the military was transported to certain places in the same trucks that local residents noticed on Novaya and Zheleznodorozhnaya streets. As the commandant’s office later tried to explain, all this was a consequence of what happened “the shelling of the Russian checkpoint on the bridge at the exit from Argun towards Grozny.” It was allegedly committed by unknown persons who left in a white Zhiguli car. According to the military, this happened on November 8 at 16:00.
On Zheleznozhorozhnaya Street, three people fell into the hands of the military at once: Temirsultanov (Sheripova Street), Musa Damaev, about 27 years old (Zavodskaya Street) and Saidbek Mutsurov, about 25 years old (Sheripova Street). One or two of them were on bicycles. All three were killed. According to relatives, that night Saidbek Mutsurov went to repay his debt. It was he who was killed after torture in the courtyard of an adobe house. On November 9 at 6.30, his older brother, 27-year-old Salambek Mutsurov, came out to look for him. On Zheleznodorozhnaya Street he found the socks of the missing man and, going into the nearest yard, saw the corpse. The Russian military immediately killed him too.

Residents of the neighboring streets knew nothing about what was happening in and around the adobe house. They calmly went to bed and were awakened at three o'clock in the morning, when mines and shells began to explode in their streets and courtyards. The shelling of Lugovaya, Pushkin, Stepnaya, Novaya and Zheleznodorozhnaya streets continued almost continuously until 7 am. The first explosions destroyed the houses of the Chalayevs and Kharumovs, located on Pushkin Street and adjacent to each other. The people in them ran out into the yard, and then, when the mines began to explode (fortunately, without hitting them with fragments), they rushed into the basement. From subsequent attacks from shells and mines, the walls and ceilings of these houses collapsed, blocking the exit from the basement. A haystack caught fire in one of the courtyards. When the artillery strikes stopped for a while, the neighbors of the Chalaevs and Kharumovs, deceived by the ensuing silence, rushed to their rescue. They quickly put out the fire and then began to clear away the rubble, but after a few minutes mines began to fall in their immediate vicinity. Six people were killed and another thirteen were wounded by fragments of exploding shells. It was not possible to take the wounded to the hospital under fire. In the morning, when examining the scene of death, it turned out that several dozen mines had exploded in a small area of the yard (eyewitnesses spoke of 185 shells and mines fired at this block). Only 14 unexploded ones were found.

That night, as a result of artillery and mortar fire in Argun, about 70 residential buildings were damaged, some seriously. These include houses belonging to the already mentioned Chalaevs and Kharumovs, as well as the Utsievs (59 Pushkin St.), the Bashtygovs (59 Stepnaya St.), the Gerasievs (68 Stepnaya St.), the Dzhabrailovs (47 Stepnaya St.), Shamilev (Stepnaya St.) and Khamzatov (Zheleznodorozhnaya St.). The last two households were completely destroyed.
Human Rights Center “Memorial” does not know the exact number of deaths. Perhaps there are more than the ten people about whom there is confirmed information. Residents of Argun talk about at least two dozen killed.

The next morning it turned out that some of the victims could only be treated in Makhachkala hospitals. The relatives of these people demanded that the military commandant of Argun issue certificates stating that the people were wounded in their homes during shelling of a populated area, fearing that without such documents it would be difficult to transport the wounded through checkpoints. But the commandant refused to do this. The certificates that he nevertheless signed only stated that the wounded were not militants.

List of those killed while fighting the fire:
1. Aset Khamsueva (Khamtsueva), born in 1955. (53 Pushkin St.), midwife, mother of four children;
2. Abdulla Aliyev, born in 1975 (Pushkin St., 52), his pregnant wife was left behind, and his daughter-in-law, a widow with three children, was wounded and admitted to hospital No. 9 of Grozny;
3. Zara Bichigova, born in 1970 (54 Pushkin St.), cook;
4. Rovzan Timieva, born 1956 (Karl Marx St.), mother of six children, five of whom are minors. Her eldest daughter Dagman and her husband Nurid Akhmadov were wounded by shrapnel;
5. Islam Yusupov, born in 1977;
6. Yahya Maskhudov, born in 1978 (Mira St.), his older brother, Saypudi Maskhudov, born in 1960, on the evening of September 28, 2001, was detained at a checkpoint in the center of Argun and killed. The next day, his body was found in the building of the city's military commandant's office.

On the morning of November 9, the areas most heavily damaged as a result of the night shelling were subjected to a “cleansing operation.” Russian security forces detained 13 people, ten of whom lived on Novaya Street. The next day, November 10, by 5 p.m., ten people managed to return home. According to other sources, all detainees have been released. In the place where these people were kept (most likely, it was the city FSB department), they were all subjected to beatings and torture, including electric shock.

On November 11, military personnel arrived at the Argun city hospital and tried to take away a person wounded by shelling. When his relatives showed him his disability certificate, they left him alone. But from the hospital the military took another person, Musa, approximately 22 years old, a resident of an urban village (possibly the so-called Indian). Memorial Human Rights Center does not know the name of this person, his exact place of residence, or what happened to him next. It is only known that the night after the shelling he was wounded by a sniper rifle.

On November 9, at about 2 p.m., residents of Argun organized a protest at a fork in the road in the city center. The corpses of the killed people were also taken out there. On November 10, the action was continued. But representatives of the military commandant’s office, the civil authorities of the city and the republic did not consider it necessary to come and explain to the people. During this action, two statements were drawn up, signed by hundreds of residents of Argun. Applications along with signatures are available in scanned form at the Memorial Human Rights Center. The first of these statements, addressed to the military commandant of the city, said in particular:

“We, the undersigned residents of the city of Argun, bring to your attention the massacres committed in the city of Argun on the night of November 8-9, 2001. As a result of the mortar shelling, there is numerous destruction and casualties among the civilian population. There is yet another misinformation in the media. As always, the destruction of militants is reported, but the casualties among civilians are kept silent..."
Below the text of this statement are the names and surnames of the killed people and the signatures of city residents. The second statement, addressed to the same military commandant of the city and employees of the prosecutor’s office, also stated the following demands:

“We, residents of the city of Argun, being law-abiding citizens of the Russian Federation, but without the right to vote, are between two fires, unarmed and helpless in our fate. We demand that the command of the federal troops confirm their helplessness and incompetence or their unwillingness to stop the lawlessness that is happening above us: hunting for people on the roads and in houses, capturing people at any time of the day or night, disappearing them without a trace, without trial or investigation. , looting, bribes that are constantly taken on the roads, killing people at any time of the day or night with bomb attacks and destruction of their property. We live in a terrible stressful situation, which is specially created to frighten civilians and increase various diseases in people, both elders and children, even leading to death. We competently declare: the genocide of the nation is underway. We want to register this on paper for future generations, because we know: we cannot get help from anyone. Therefore, we require that you personally sign this application. We want to send it to the UN. In connection with the above, the action of many thousands against massacres adopts a resolution demanding:

1. Stop genocide, that is, mass murder.
2. Free us from legal gangs of Russia.
3. We are categorically against conscripting our children into the Russian army.”

***
On the night of November 9, in the city of Urus-Martan, Russian security forces detained local resident Rustam Ismailov (Gornaya St., 8). A few days later, his relatives managed to secure his release. It turned out that after his arrest he was beaten and subjected to electric shock. He was hung up and left in this state for a long time. Relatives refused to tell all the details of the detention and release of Rustam Ismailov, believing that it was unsafe for them.

***
During the day in Grozny, the Russian military took Shamil Magomedovich Isakov, born in 1982, living at the address: 1st Sadovaya St., 34a, apt. 43, from his house.
The military drove up to the house in two armored personnel carriers and Ural vehicles. They beat two young men who were playing backgammon at the entrance. At this time, Shamil Isakov was in the bathroom. Having burst into the apartment, the military tied his hands, wrapped his head in a T-shirt and, without allowing him to dress properly, dragged him to the exit. Shamil’s mother, Luiza Isakova, demanded that the reason for what was happening be explained to her. In turn, the military ordered her to “shut up” and locked her in one of the rooms. They pushed the young man’s wife into another, and he was taken out into the street, lifted into a Ural with registration plates s790хх 95/gaz and taken away. The kidnappers were in camouflage uniforms and masks. They did not show any documents and spoke only Russian, without an accent. They insulted Shamil, members of his family, as well as people who happened to be near the house.

The whereabouts of Shamil Isakov were established only on November 13. It turned out that he was taken to the temporary detention center at the Leninsky District VOVD. On the same day, the parents hired a lawyer, but he was allowed to see Isakov only ten days later. After the official charges were filed. Investigator of the prosecutor's office Andrei Igorevich Mazin, under far-fetched pretexts, and sometimes simply saying “no,” did not allow the lawyer to see his client. During this time, he was forced to sign a confession that he allegedly filmed the explosion of a Russian armored personnel carrier on a video camera. At the first meeting, and until December 6, 2001 it was the only one, he told the lawyer that he was forced to do this under torture. This was confirmed by those who sat with him in the temporary detention center and managed to free themselves from there. According to them, Shamil Isakov had broken ribs and a broken nose, his legs were beaten off with a metal rod and were very swollen, and his body had traces of burns from cigarettes and a lighter. His hands were numb from being constantly handcuffed.

Shamil Isakov spent a month and a half in the Leninsky District VOVD. Of these, 16 days were spent in a bathhouse where police officers washed. Then ten months - in the hospital cell of the Chernokozovo pre-trial detention center in the Naursky district of the republic, from where he was transported to the city of Pyatigorsk and further to the Krasnodar Territory, to the "Lower floodplain".
In August 2002, a trial took place at which Shamil Isakov was sentenced to four years in prison. The last words of the representative of the prosecution were as follows: “I did not hold a weapon in my hands, I did not kill anyone, but intellectually I was with them (i.e. with the participants of the WF of the ChRI. - Comp.).” He asked for ten years in prison for the defendant, but the judge took into account that after his arrest his son was born and commuted the sentence. In 2004, Shamil Isakov was released and returned to his homeland.

***
Russian military personnel fired at civilian vehicles on the Grozny-Shatoi highway. There are dead and wounded among the drivers and passengers. The victims were taken to Grozny city hospital No. 9 and the local hospital in the village of Starye Atagi. Memorial Human Rights Center does not have any other details of what happened.

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