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Russian rights group accuses military of Chechen killings
January 18, 2002
AFP

A sweep by Russian troops through a Chechen town earlier this month left five civilians dead and six others missing, a Russian human rights group said, as separatist rebels inflicted heavy losses on two military convoys.

The human rights group Memorial, quoting local witnesses, said Russian soldiers scouring the town of Tsotsin-Yurt, 25 kilometres (15 miles) east of Grozny, also beat up suspects, looted houses and shops, and soiled the local mosque with excrement.

Tsotsin-Yurt was the centre of a major operation by Russian troops between December 31 and January 3 that was later extended to the nearby town of Argun.

The Kremlin's chief spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said the actions at Argun and Tsotsin-Yurt had concluded successfully with the killing of 92 Chechen rebels and the dispersion of scores to other regions.

"Memorial can confirm the killing of five civilians rounded up during this operation," the group said of the Russian action at Tsotsin-Yurt.

Three of the five have been identified, it said in a statement. Two of the bodies found had been badly damaged by explosions.

Of the two others, both of whom suffered serious wounds and had their ears cut off, the human rights group said it was "clear that they had been the victims of summary executions, killed by federal forces after being arrested at their homes."

It said it had reports of other killings of civilians which it had not yet had time to verify, and had sent its information to the republic's pro-Russian prosecutor with a demand for an inquiry.

A second non-government organisation, the Association for Russo-Chechen Friendship, reported serious human-rights abuses at Argun during the sweep staged their from January 3 to 9.

"Local residents said there had been massive looting by the troops," the group said in a statement.

One resident quoted in the statement said she had been asked for a 4,000-dollar ransom to ensure that her son was not shot.

In a provisional toll, the group said seven local residents had been killed during the sweep.

Human rights organisations have frequently denounced Russian military sweeps in Chechnya which they say are often a pretext for looting, abitrary arrests and occasionally random killings.

Meanwhile, Chechen rebels killed nine Russian soldiers in two attacks, Russian military officials said.

The soldiers died Wednesday in attacks on military convoys in the Vedeno region, in southeastern Chechnya, and near Urus-Martan, in the southwest.

Three others were wounded, the officials said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

The military agency Interfax-AVN, quoting Russian officials, said three rebels were shot dead by Russian forces during a sweep Wednesday near Bachi-Yurt, 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Grozny, but rebel sources said the three dead were civilians.

The Russian soldiers arrested 20 other civilians, the Chechen radical separatists said on their website www.kavkaz.org.

A spokesman for rebel Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov told AFP that around 30 Russian troops died in the rebel attacks.

Both rebels and Russian officials inflate losses inflicted on their adversaries in battle reports that are impossible to verify independently.

Russian security services warned of a heightened risk of terrorist attacks in Moscow as a result of Russia's military operation in Chechnya and its support for the international anti-terrorist coalition.

"There has been a real possibility of attacks with biological, chemical and radioactive weapons in Moscow recently," Viktor Zakharov, head of the FSB (ex-KGB) intelligence services for the Moscow region told Interfax.

The FSB head in Chechnya, Leonid Babkin, told ITAR-TASS that around 250 "foreign mercenaries," most of them from the Middle East, were currently fighting in the republic.

This was down by about half since last year, most of the others having been killed in special operations, he said.

Around 3,500 Russian soldiers and 11,000 Chechen rebels have died since Moscow sent troops into the southern republic on October 1, 1999 to put down a separatist insurgency, according to official Russian figures.

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