November 24, 2001

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At dawn, several Russian armored personnel carriers drove into the village of Koshkeldy. The soldiers who arrived broke into the houses of local residents and captured six people. Their relatives were not informed about the reasons for what was happening. They were left in the dark about who exactly was taking people and where. However, they managed to trace that the armored personnel carriers then headed to Gudermes.

As soon as the so-called curfew, relatives of the abducted went to the regional center in order to achieve their release. And indeed, on the first day they managed to rescue two people. The rest were released only on the fifth day. All this time they were beating them, trying to force them to incriminate themselves, to confess to actions that they did not commit.

They demanded weapons from relatives of the detainees as ransom. But they did not agree, knowing that some of those for whom they gave machine guns were then detained again after some time and accused of belonging to the VF of the ChRI. Relatives and kidnappers from Russian security forces agreed that for each person an amount equivalent to the cost of the machine gun on the black market would be paid.

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