• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

HUMAN RIGHTS: THE KEY BATTLEFIELD IN CHECHNYA

RIA Novosti

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Yury Filippov). --

In late March 2005, a jury in Grozny, the capital of once separatist Chechnya, issued a guilty verdict against a Russian serviceman accused of severely beating a local Chechen who later disappeared. This was the first time this had happened in the more than ten years of the conflict that had been smoldering on the fertile soil of separatism and terrorism.

Sergei Lapin, a senior police lieutenant from the northern town of Khanty-Mansiisk who served in Chechnya in 2001, was convicted of abuse of office and forgery in public office. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

This was an unprecedented event considering that the trial took place in Grozny and the judges were Chechens, who are not inclined to show mercy to anyone who uses violence against their countrymen. However, Russian human rights activists from the Obshchestvenny Verdikt (Public Verdict) Foundation are unhappy with the verdict. For several years, they have been trying to put pressure on the investigators and the court, but the prosecutors failed to prove that Lapin had killed the young Chechen, Zelimkhan Murdalov.

Who could have forced Murdalov to disappear? What happened to him? Where is he buried if he was killed? The young Chechen's relatives are convinced that Lapin did this and are ready to collect more evidence to prove it.

The Federal Command claims that the separatists and terrorists are to blame for kidnappings. They abduct people for ransom and they have been actively engaged in this criminal business since at least summer 1996, when the separatist regime of Aslan Maskhadov (recently killed by the federal troops) came to power in Chechnya.

There is no doubt that this is true: Maskhadov-led bandits kidnapped Chechens even in Moscow and, of course, during their terrible raids on villages near Grozny.

However, this is not the whole truth. "Paramilitary units acting in Chechnya under the controlof the Russian special services and conducting mopping-up operations there continue to abduct people, some of whom disappear later. Many of them have not been seen for years, since 1999 and even 1996." This statement came from a man with whom even the federal command had to agree, Aslambek Aslakhanov. He is one of the best-known Chechens in Russia, a former State Duma deputy, and now adviser to Vladimir Putin. Aslakhanov claims that many young people take up arms today only because they fear that if they do not do so, they risk becoming the victims of "death squads" close to the Russian special services.

"Each human rights violation in Chechnya will be examined and the guilty punished," said Sergei Abramov, chairman of the Chechen government, at a press conference in Moscow several days after Lapin was sentenced. It would have been a good piece of news if several hours before that Russian news agencies had not reported that another three Chechens had been abducted. As a source from the Chechen law-enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti, "in the village of Agishbatoi in the Vedeno district, several men in camouflage broke into a house and threatened the man living there with a gun before leading him away in an unknown direction."

Will this crime be investigated and the guilty party punished? Who committed it and on whose behalf?

As the problem of separatism is largely no longer on the agenda in Chechnya, human rights are becoming the key battlefield in this war-ravaged republic.