The abduction of three brothers in Gekhi with subsequent massacre, the collision of a military vehicle with a minibus in Grozny, the murders in Mayrtup and Urus-Martan

October 3, 2001

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On the night of October 3, in the village of Gekhi, federal law enforcement officers detained the Eldarkhanov brothers: Beslan, Ruslan and Rustam. Their father is Khas-Magomed Eldarkhanov. In the village of Budyonny, a search was carried out in the house where the brothers lived, during which, according to some sources, a machine gun and various types of ammunition were discovered. The Eldarkhanovs were taken to the VOVD in the city of Urus-Martan. Relatives witnessed the arrest and search.

At dawn, Rustam Eldarkhanov was thrown out on the road leading from the regional center to the village of Goyskoye. He was badly beaten and was coughing up blood. The face is bruised, the right eye and the entire right side of the face are broken. Through an abandoned garden, he barely managed to reach the grain flow of the state farm named after Michurin. He asked the workers where he was, and told where he was from and how he ended up in this place. They helped him get to his relatives, who, in the hope of finding out something about the fate of the brothers, stood near the building of the VOVD of the Urus-Martan district. After some time, it became known that Beslan and Ruslan Eldarkhanov were killed, and their bodies lay in the courtyard of the temporary department.

The brothers' corpses were handed over for burial. At the same time, Russian police officers stated that the bodies were handed over to them from the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the Chechen Republic, which, like the military district commandant’s office, was located in the same building as them.

Relatives of those killed did not know whether a criminal case had been opened on this fact. They did not file a complaint against the actions of federal law enforcement officers anywhere.

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In Grozny, on Pionerskaya Street, a Ural military vehicle collided with an RAF minibus. Six passengers of the minibus received various injuries. The culprits of the accident, according to eyewitnesses and victims, were the Russian military.

In one convoy, along with the car that committed the accident, there were a military truck and an armored personnel carrier. According to eyewitnesses, the Ural driver shouted to his colleagues: “We’re breaking up! Kill them!” In the minibus there was a Chechen OMON soldier armed with a machine gun. Taking his weapon at the ready, he warned that he would not allow people to be killed. The military did not test his resolve and moved on.

Witnesses of the incident said that in parting, one of the military men told the frightened passengers of the minibus: let them thank the commander who stopped his subordinates. “Otherwise there would be no one alive here,” he added. But everyone decided that what had a sobering effect on the military was not the “commander’s shout” noticed by many, but the very real sight of the riot policeman’s machine gun.

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Late in the evening in the village of Mayrtup, an unknown person approached the house of Khozh-Baudi Musayev. He knocked on the gate and called the owner outside. As soon as he left, several shots were fired. The unknown person then quickly left the murder scene.

During the first war, Khozh-Baudi Musaev was the head of the village administration. After the withdrawal of Russian troops from the republic, he lived permanently in Mayrtup and was engaged in commercial activities. Periodically he traveled to the city of Cherkessk (KBR) and brought money from there, paid to village residents as compensation for housing lost during the fighting. Before the murder, he came from Cherkessk. Fellow villagers suggest that his murder could be connected specifically with his trip. Later, Khozh-Baudi's relatives found the killer and avenged the death of their relative.

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At approximately 22.30 in the city of Urus-Martan, up to eight armed men dressed in camouflage uniforms killed local residents Aslambek Abazovich Abubakarov, born 1963, and his cousin Abubakar Avgaev, born 1946. The unknown people spoke Russian and Chechen. The circumstances of the murder are unknown.


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