#7
The Scotsman
January 1, 2003
Vanished in Moscow's dirty war on terror
BY TOM PARFITT IN NAZRAN, INGUSHETIA

IT WAS 11pm when they came for Akhmed.

Ten soldiers in masks burst into his parents' house in the Chechen village of Urus Martan. Akhmed, 24, was suspected of being a rebel veteran of battles with Russian troops.

His family - who do not want to be identified - have no clue of the young man's fate since he was dragged away that night, six weeks ago.

As Russia's President Vladimir Putin wages a no-holds-barred "war on terror", Chechnya is being swept by a series of targeted abductions.

Small teams of Russian special forces are accused of snatching Chechen men and teenage boys in night-time raids. The victims, who often vanish without trace in what critics call a modern variant on Stalinist state terror, are known as "the disappeared".

Experts fear targeted abductions will be stepped up in the wake of Friday's double suicide lorry bombing in Grozny. More than 80 people died in the rubble of the offices of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration.

Russian troops typically used large-scale "cleansing operations" to flush out pro-independence guerrillas, with whole villages blockaded and swept by scores of troops.

These zachistki are still common where the army has limited control, says Alexander Cherkasov, of the human rights group Memorial. "But in urban areas and rebel strongholds the emphasis has switched to swifter, more secretive raids."

Targeted abductions moved into overdrive after the storming of a Moscow theatre in October. More than 100 hostages were killed after Russian special forces used a deadly gas to knock out attackers led by a Chechen warlord.

Russian authorities blame rebel fighters for the night-time raids, saying the rebels target officials in Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration, or civilians who sympathise with the authorities. Analysts say the Russian army is the chief culprit.

Typically, Chechen men are seized at night by a small team of masked troops. "These soldiers are effectively contract killers," says a Moscow-based defence analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer. "Often they torture their victims to death."

Many abductees disappear without trace. The bodies of others are found dumped near villages or near the Russian army's fortified headquarters at Khankala. Human rights groups say 2,000 people have vanished in the last three years.

Some families negotiate with shadowy intermediaries to get back their loved ones' corpses, paying hundreds or thousands of dollars. Others find it impossible to discover their fate.

"What can we do?" said Akhmed's aunt, in an interview with The Scotsman at the Sputnik refugee camp in neighbouring Ingushetia. "The authorities will tell us nothing. Maybe he will be killed. If not, he will certainly be an invalid. All we can do is trust in God and hope to see him again."

Akhmed's family say the young man was never involved in fighting, and so timid he rarely left the house.

If so, his case is not exceptional. Many of those abducted are innocent civilians, it is claimed, fingered by faulty intelligence extracted under torture.

Russian forces set up temporary filtration points on the edge of villages where inhabitants are taken for interrogation. There are reports of the use of electric shock treatment - and beatings on the bladder, after victims are forced to drink large quantities of water.

"Of course, some of those who are abducted and murdered are genuine boyeviki[fighters]," says Mr Cherkasov of Memorial. "But that is not an excuse for extra-judicial killing by the state."

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