Russian army in Chechnya: night raids, extortion and extrajudicial executions

May 16, 2001

***

At 4 am, five Russian military men, two of whom were wearing masks, broke down the door of apartment 46 in building 21 on Novatorov Street in Grozny. Bursting in, they beat and, having tied their hands, took away the owner of the apartment, Shamil Dukvahovich Edilov, born in 1966, and Ruslan Dakaev, born in 1968, in an unknown direction. Eyewitnesses to the detention of these people claim
that the military asked them about weapons and drugs. Ruslan Dakaev was a resident of the Nadterechny district and lived in the city
from a friend, Shamil Edilov, doing car repairs with him. Relatives of these people organized searches, but they failed to find them alive.

***
Between 5 and 7 am, as a result of selective raids on the houses of local residents in the villages of Duba-Yurt and Chiri-Yurt in the Shali district, the Russian military detained 11 people.

After the relatives paid for each a ransom equal to the value on the black market of two machine guns,
they were all released. But by that time, they had already been subjected to torture and beatings in the temporary detention center of the VOVD of the Shali region,
including degrading honor and human dignity. Then they made me drink some liquid. The resident of the village of Chiri-Yurt, Rustam Khuseinovich Khasanov, born in 1979, had the hardest time of all, who was taken away from home along with his brothers.
He was kept in the temporary department for eight days.

On May 24, in serious condition, relatives ransomed
it from the military. He said that he, like other detainees, was forcibly forced to drink some kind of liquid, and then they injected it into his arm. On the same day unconscious
he was taken to the hospital in Shali. However, the doctors failed to make a diagnosis and therefore did not provide any treatment. The medical staff of the hospital only recorded the symptoms: Rustam Khasanov was constantly vomiting, he had sharp fluctuations in pressure, he was delirious, and all the time he asked to be taken out of the cell, the patient's urine was white and resembled milk. On May 26, he was taken by helicopter to the central hospital in Vladikavkaz (Republic of North Ossetia-Alania).


***

At oil sources in the 20th section of the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny, the Russian military detained six local residents. After a ransom was paid for each, equal to the cost of two machine guns, they were released on the same day.

***

In the afternoon, 19-year-old Ibragim Khazuev was killed in the village of Makhkety, Vedeno district. The Russian military, who were on the street, without warning, opened fire from machine guns when he tried to escape. Earlier, in February of this year, they already detained Ibragim Khazuev on suspicion, as relatives were told, of having links with arms dealers. For 500 US dollars, it was then possible to redeem it.

***

In Grozny, the remains of two residents of the village of Churchu-Irzu of the Nozhai-Yurtovsky district were discovered and identified by relatives: Magomed-Salakh Magomedovich Alsultanov, born in 1963, and Khanpashi Abdulkhazhievich Alkhanov, born in 1964. The circumstances of the death of these people have not yet been fully clarified. However, it is known that on November 12, 2000, the Russian military detained them in their native village and took them away in an unknown direction.

 

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

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