Document reports violence and war crimes being committed by Russians in Chechnya

This document is totally refuting the idea that the situation in Chechnya is allegedly coming back to normal. Coming from the puppet administration in Chechnya, the document reports atrocious information about the violence and war crimes being committed on the occupied territories of Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

Reportedly, Le Monde magazine got a hold of the copy of this document and in the end of March the copy was forwarded to Putin. The Russian translation of this article was published on InoPressa.ru website.

This is what the officials from the structures under presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky answered the newspaper: «We can neither confirm nor refute it. Maybe this report does exist. Maybe it was really forwarded to the president, but it did not go through our service».

This 30-page-long document represents the first attempt of making an official report about the crimes committed against peaceful civilians in Chechnya. The section titled «Information on murders committed on the territory of Chechnya in the period of January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2002» contains official reports about 1,314 victims of murders of peaceful civilians in the year 2002 alone. The section mentions the deaths that happened not during armed clashes, not during artillery shellings, bombings or blasts of radio-controlled landmines. It is mentioning mass executions, the French newspaper writes.

According to that official document, on the average 109 Chechens become victims of murders every month. It is twice as high as the estimates of Russian watchdog «Memorial», which keeps track of the atrocities being committed in Chechnya. But again, the «Memorial» admits that it only has incomplete information since it is impossible to track the situation across the entire territory of the Republic. Thus, the information of the human rights activists does not reveal the whole truth.

And here is another fact that the report contains: the existence of mass burials, which has been officially acknowledged for the first time. Two pages of the section titled «Data concerning mass burials of civilians on the territory of the Chechen Republic» list 49 towns and villages with the number of dead bodies exhumed from common pits since the war had started.

260 bodies were discovered in one of the pits near the “Grozny Central Cemetery”, the document says. In the suburban town of Khankala (the main Russian military base in Chechnya) body remains of 43 people were exhumed. In the village of Alkhan-Kala 13 bodies were discovered. In Old Sunzha (Russian name Staraya Sunzha) 18 bodies. On the premises of the 15th Dairy Plant - 2 bodies. In the village of Berkat-Yurt - 5 bodies.

This document, compiled either in February 2002 or in February 2003 (could be a typo in the text), gives the official figure: 2,879 dead bodies have been found in the common pits. Thus, this was the first time when Russian bureaucratic documents mentioned the term of a mass burial, Le Monde writes.

Another section of the report lists dozens of cases of murders, discoveries of corpses with traces of violent death, discoveries of body fragments (tied-up Chechens were killed with explosives: the method that Russian soldiers have been using over the past year), as well as kidnappings, tortures and beatings of peaceful Chechen civilians.

First the document names the crime, then the name of the victim, whose identity has been established, then the place where the murder was committed, and finally the number of armored vehicles parked near the Chechen houses at the moment when the crime was being committed. This detail, absolutely innocuous at first glance, is a real proof of the involvement of Russian troops in the atrocities against peaceful civilians. The document mentions the presence of BTR armored vehicles in 32 cases of the crimes committed in January-February 2003.

Moreover, these official documents show that the beginning of this year has not brought any relief to Chechen peaceful civilians, the French periodical says. 70 murders, 126 kidnappings, 19 disappearances (without kidnapping), 2 rapes, and 25 discoveries of fragments of human bodies were recorded in the chart that gives a comparative picture of serious crimes committed on the territory of Chechnya in January, February, and March 2003.

Why was this report compiled? Probably, during the «referendum on the republic’s constitution», which Moscow has conducted in order to prove to the entire world that the political process is allegedly going on at full speed, some people wanted to give the president the opportunity to have more of a realistic look at the situation in Chechnya. But most likely, being a former agent of Russian secret services, Putin has his own sources that inform him of the real state of affairs, Le Monde writes.

«It is also possible that these are the ambitions of Mufti Kadyrov. The head of pro-Russian administration, appointed by Moscow, wants to rely on the «referendum» in order to be elected president of Chechnya this year instead of Aslan Maskhadov, who is now conducting guerilla warfare. While realizing that the retributions against peaceful civilians are undermining his already unstable positions, Ahmad Kadyrov probably tried to get the central government worried about the facts of atrocities committed by Moscow’s soldiers».

Compiled based on factual information locally gathered by the officials of puppet authorities, this document is the evidence that totally refutes Russian official statements. Yes, it says, the Russian army is committing war crimes. Yes, Chechnya is a territory that has mass burials everywhere you go. No, there have been no improvements for the past few months.

«Russian authorities are dead silent concerning what is happening on the territory, which is closed for the mass media», Le Monde added.

Kavkaz-Center