July 18, 2001

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On the night of July 18, Ruslan Abdulrakhmanovich Almurzaev, 35, district police officer in the village of Chiri-Yurt, was fired at in his apartment; one attacker was killed, the other was wounded.

According to the stories of the villagers, the policeman returned fire from a machine gun and forced the unknown to retreat. Already from the street, they tried to throw a grenade into the apartment. However, it exploded in the hands of one of them. Subsequently, a pistol with a silencer and a walkie-talkie were found at the scene. Before the attackers left, the residents of Chiri-Yurt, they claimed, heard a shout: “Roma, take him away,” and a selective obscenity in Russian.

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About three o'clock in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, Basai Khusainova, born in 1937, was killed. According to information received from local residents, the Russian military shot her in the courtyard of her own house, when, in response to their knock, she went out to open the gate. However, the next day, Radio Russia reported that a woman had been killed near the village while she was "bringing lunch to the militants." She was allegedly ordered several times to stop, but she did not obey.

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For two weeks, the village of Alkhan-Kala remains blocked by Russian units. Entrances and exits from it are blocked by roadblocks. The military burned down the only pedestrian bridge that connected the settlement with the flat territory of Chechnya. The road bridge was blown up by them in December 2000.

You can leave Alkhan-Kala only through the city of Grozny, but for this you need to get a special pass from the military commandant's office. It is not issued to local residents. Traffic is limited in the village itself. Many streets are blocked by checkpoints. There are about twelve of them here. The territories around them are mined, and at night they are shot by snipers. There have been several cases of livestock being blown up by mines.

The military determined for the movement of vehicles and pedestrians inside the village Mira street to the railway crossing and Lenin street. But people try not to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary. There were no cases of people being detained, but searches and robberies are carried out everywhere.

Thus, drunken contractors in the western part of the settlement demanded that women be given to them for fun, since, according to them, “all Chechen men will still be destroyed by them.” Residents of Alkhan-Kala are frightened by the possibility of another mass capture and beating of people.

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Two events took place in the village of Raduzhnoye, which in the next few days kept both the local residents and the authorities of the republic in suspense. First, at about four o'clock, the Russian military, who arrived in the settlement in an armored personnel carrier with white stripes on the armor, broke into the house located at the address: Novaya St., 7 and, putting bags over their heads and tying their hands behind their backs, took away Ali Isaevich Uspaev , born in 1952, and his stepson Amir Alievich Magomedov, born in 1976

Immediately after that, Ali Uspaev's wife rushed to her brother-in-law, who lived nearby, Idris Uspaev, director of the secondary school in the neighboring village of Ali Uspaev. Dolinsky. Having run out into the street, he noticed a group of military men leaving in the direction of the Grozny-Goragorsky highway, and ran after them. There were four armored personnel carriers on the outskirts of the village. At 10-15 meters from them, on the bridge across the Alkhanchurt Canal, the military was doing something around the white Zhiguli. I didn’t have time to see what exactly, because they noticed him and opened fire on him. Idris Uspaev rushed back down the street. Then I heard an explosion and then the sound of armored vehicles driving away.

The picture of what happened on the bridge became clearer from the testimony of other residents of Raduzhny. According to them, at the exit from the village, the military from one of the armored personnel carriers fired on a Zhiguli car of the sixth model (registration number: 997 RO 05 / rus), which belonged to Aslan Vakhaevich Dakaev, born in 1978. Together with him in the cabin was Rustam Moulatovich Achkhanov, born in 1982. The young people lived in the village of Pobedinskoye, the first at 13 Tsvetochnaya St., and the second at 15 Yubileynaya St. Running out of the car, they tried to hide behind the nearest houses, but automatic bursts followed. Aslan Dakaev died immediately (according to other sources, he was killed while still in the car). Rustam Achkhanov may have been injured, but remained conscious and able to walk on his own. The Russian military men who ran up took him to an armored personnel carrier, picked up and carried the corpse of the dead man there, after which they tried to turn over the car they had fired upon. When that failed, they doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. Then they got into armored vehicles and drove towards Grozny. According to the testimonies of the young people's relatives, in particular, Ikhvan, brother of Rustam Achkhanov, they turned to the so-called. Solyona Balka, where, along with other Russian units, the 21st Sofrinskaya OBRON VV of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation was based at that time.

More than a hundred local residents blocked the Grozny-Goragorsk road, demanding the release of the abducted, the extradition of corpses and the arrival at the scene of the crime of the heads of the civil administration, the prosecutor's office and representatives of the group of troops stationed in the republic.

It was during these days that the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation, Yuri Chaika, visited Chechnya. In the first half of July 18, his cortege was stopped by people who blocked the road. The minister came out to them, listened to the stories about the incident, examined the skeleton of the burnt car, pools of blood, and promised: “We will look into what happened, the guilty will be punished!”
On a trip to Chechnya, he was accompanied by an NTV film crew. This channel reported on July 19 that "four local residents were illegally detained in the village of Pobedinskoye."
The next day, the head of the administration of the Grozny (rural) district and representatives of the prosecutor's office came to the people who continued to block the highway. The head of the administration reassured them, saying literally the following: “We will achieve that in two days all the detainees will be returned!” However, then the military drove up to the crowd. They threatened to use force if the blockade of the road was not lifted.

The villagers were asked to go home, and the relatives of the abducted people, who believed the promises of the authorities, considered that a confrontation under these conditions could only harm them. After two days of blockade of the road, the protest action was terminated (for these events, see: Yu.

As of January 2007, the fate of Ali Uspaev, Amir Magomedov, Rustam Achkhanov and Aslan Dakaev is unknown. Their relatives visited the village of Khankala, visited the military unit stationed on Salt Balka, applied to various authorities (for example, to V. Kalamanov's bureau). But, apart from the initiation of a criminal case (No. 19109 under Article 105, part 2, clause “a” of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, “the murder of two or more persons”), in the end, their efforts did not lead to anything. Already on July 20, 2001, on the basis of jurisdiction, he was transferred to the military prosecutor's office of the United Forces (s) in the North Caucasus (outgoing No. 1185) and since then there has been no information about the progress of the investigation, about whether anyone no, they don't have it.

Later, Memorial Human Rights Center learned that on the same day (that is, July 18) near the village of Pobedinskoye, which is located not far from the village of Raduzhnoye and the village of Dolinsky, V.I. Amirkhanov, a resident of the city of Shali, was abducted by unidentified armed people . The prosecutor's office of the Grozny (rural) district initiated a criminal case on this fact (No. 19141 under Art. 126, part 2, paragraphs “a”, “d” of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Later, it was suspended “due to the impossibility of finding a person to be brought in as an accused” (Article 195, paragraph 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR). We have no other information about the fate of this man.

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