July 15, 2001

***
Bislan Lom-Alievich Islamov, born in 1980, was taken away from the house located at 88 Lenina St. at dawn in Petropavlovskaya stanitsa during a targeted “cleansing” operation. In addition to him, two more local residents were detained.

The military did not introduce themselves to anyone and did not tell where they were going to deliver these people. Subsequently, the relatives managed to find out that all three were kept in the village of Goryachevodskoye, in the premises of a former vegetable store, next to which units of Russian law enforcement agencies have been stationed since the beginning of the war. The district commandant's office was also located on its territory.

Three days later, Bislan Islamov and two other residents of Petropavlovskaya were released.

***
On the fields of the Melchkhinsky state farm, three people were found in an extremely emaciated state and with traces of cruel torture and torture.

They were brought to this place in an armored personnel carrier and, since the victims themselves could not move, obviously hoping that they would be discovered by someone. And, indeed, the combine operators working on the field noticed the people dropped by the military and immediately informed the villagers about it. Among the latter there were those who managed to identify them. It turned out that all of them were detained during the last "cleansing operations" on the territory of the Kurchaloy district. Moreover, two were residents of the village of Kurchaloy, and the third turned out to be a native of the neighboring village of Mayrtup.

All three were taken to the hospital of the district center on the same day.

Thus, out of the total number of detainees in Kurchaloy (nine people), the Russian military released three. The fate of six remained unknown. Surnames, first names, as well as address data of released people are not disclosed at their personal request.

***
In the afternoon, near the village of Starye Atagi, on the highway leading from the Argun Gorge towards the city of Grozny, a Ural car was blown up while passing a convoy of military equipment. One Russian serviceman was wounded. Under the cover of helicopters, fire was opened on the outskirts of the village (according to some other evidence, the military laid a mine and detonated it at a distance). Several houses on Shosseinaya Street were damaged.

At about 10 pm, unknown persons shot Avadi Bashaev, born in 1955, the deputy head of the local administration. It happened in the center of the village not far from his house on Solnechnaya street. Next to a group of talking villagers, among whom was the murdered one, a Zhiguli passenger car of the sixth model, without license plates and with tinted windows, stopped. Two men got out of it and, approaching Avadi Bashayev, opened fire from a submachine gun and a pistol. Then they quickly got into the car and drove off.

The victim was a participant in the first Chechen war. During the battles for the Shatoi district center in May 1995, he covered the retreat of the Chechen militias and was seriously wounded. From 1996 until the beginning of the current campaign, in which he did not take part, he held fairly high positions in the government of Aslan Maskhadov. For some time he was deputy chief of the operational headquarters for combating the theft of petroleum products.

On March 2, 2001, Avadi Bashaev was arrested by Russian security forces and taken to Khankala, where he was interrogated under torture. Seventeen days later he was taken to the outskirts of the city of Argun and there, having beaten him again, he was released. From the end of spring, he began to work in his village as a deputy head of the administration. The funeral of the deceased took place the next day.

***
On the outskirts of the village of Duba-Yurt, the body of Salavdi Saidovich Balatbiev (Bolotbiev), born in 1958, was found. According to the testimony of local residents, on July 11, during the “cleansing” operation, he was taken away by the Russian military, who arrived from Shali in an armored personnel carrier with numbers smeared and the inscription “Natasha”. The same armored vehicle was involved in the recent operation in the village of Chiri-Yurt. Numerous traces of violence were recorded on the body of Salavdi Balatbiev (Bolotbiev). In particular, his eyes were gouged out, his ears were cut off, his throat was cut, there were bullet and bayonet wounds. Most likely, the skull was pierced with a control shot, then the scalp was removed. The entire body, as well as the face, was covered with burns, as if it had been burned with blowtorches. Fractures of the hands, feet and ribs were noted.

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