October 12, 2006
Slain Reporter’s Last Story Bares Chechen Torture
By C. J. CHIVERS
MOSCOW, Oct. 12 — The Novaya Gazeta newspaper today published the last article of its slain special correspondent, Anna Politkovskaya, and posted images from videoptapes she had obtained of Chechens being tortured.
The article, a column that presented new allegations of torture by government security forces, appeared on the same day the European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling holding Russia responsible for the executions by Russian police officers of 5 Chechen civilians in early 2000.
The victims of that incident included a one-year-old boy and his young mother, who was eight months pregnant. All of the victims were shot, and the mother’s jewelry was stolen, the court said.
The article also appeared as the federal prosecutor’s office in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, said it was checking into reports of the disappearance of another prominent Chechen — the mother of the last wife of Shamil Basayev, the terrorist leader who died in an explosion in June.
The woman, Rita Ersenoyeva, has been missing since Oct. 2, human rights workers say, and had spent the last several weeks searching for her daughter, who had been kidnapped as well — after what her mother had described as a forced marriage to the terrorist leader.
Mr. Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s most well known journalists and human rights advocates, was fatally shot on Oct. 7, the victim of an apparent contract killing. Today’s events together served as a sort of coda on her life, reminders of the lingering chaos and human cost of the war in Chechnya, a conflict Russia insists has been won.
Ms. Politkovskaya, 48, was a leader among the shrinking group of Russian journalists who dared to keep challenging that thinking, by writing frankly about the violence and disorder in the republic. Chechnya, her work said, remains a place where open fighting has slowed but murky police and military operations continue, and chilling behavior by Russian forces and the Kremlin’s proxies is a dark norm.
Her final article, under the headline “We Declare You A Terrorist,’’ presented allegations of the use of torture to exact confessions and manufacture good news from the war.
“When prosecutors and the courts work, not for the sake of the law, but on political commission and with the only goal of providing good reports for the Kremlin, then criminal cases are baked like pancakes,” Ms. Politkovskaya wrote. “An assembly line producing ‘open-hearted confessions’ effectively guarantees good data on the war on terror.”
She asked: “Are we, the lawful, fighting against the unlawful? Or are we battling ‘their’ lawlessness with ‘ours?’
The article described the case of Beslan Gadayev, a Chechen migrant deported from Ukraine to Chechnya, where he claimed in a letter to Ms. Politkovskaya that he was asked if he had committed certain unsolved murders.
When he said he had not, he wrote, he was punched near the eye, beaten, tied up, handcuffed, hung from a pipe and then connected to electric cable, whose current was switched on. In time he confessed, he said, and the next day was told to confess again in front of journalists, and to say his injuries were the result of an escape attempt.
The article was also accompanied by images from videos that Ms. Politkovskaya had obtained of an armed Chechen —presumably a member of the Chechen armed forces, her newspaper said — torturing at least one man.
Not long after the newspaper was published this morning, the European Court of Human Rights released a unanimous decision blaming Russia for the deaths of five members of the Estamirov family in Grozny in early 2000, a period when Russian forces had just wrested control of the capital from separatists.
It also found the Russia had failed to adequately investigate the killings, which were part of a sweep operation that Human Rights Watch, the American-based organization, investigated and called a massacre.
At least 60 civilians were killed, shot at close range, human rights workers said, apparently by enraged police units from St. Petersburg and Ryazan who were looting the neighborhood.
Nobody has ever been charged for the crimes. The court today ordered Russia to pay about 230,000 euros — $289,OOO — in damages to the victims’ relatives.
Ole Solvang, director of the Stitchting Russian Justice Initiative, a private organization that has helped survivors of the Chechen war seek justice in the European Court, said the evidence showed that the deaths were deliberate. For example, he said, the slain year-old boy, Khasan Estamirov, was shot multiple times at close range. At least one shot was to the head.
“They just went completely nuts that day,” Mr. Solvang said. “It was horrible.”
Russia, which earlier this year also was found responsible by the court for the summary execution of a young Ingush fighter at about the same time, made no comment on the case. It has three months to appeal.
Later in the day, Valery Kuznetsov, the top federal prosecutor in Chechnya, said by telephone that his office was looking into reports of the abduction of Ms. Ersenoyeva, the mother-in-law of the man who was once Russia’s most feared terrorist leader.Kidnappings, both to gain ransom and to kill suspected rebels and their supporters, have been a part of life in Chechnya for more than a decade. Human rights groups say Russian forces or Chechens loyal to the Kremlin premier are often responsible.
Ms. Ersenoyeva disappeared on Oct. 2 after being summoned by telephone to an administration building in the village of Stariye Atagi, according to Tanya Lokshina, chairwoman of Center Demos, a human rights groups. Neither Ms. Lokshina nor Mr. Kuznetsov said they had found witnesses to the abduction.
But Ms. Ersenoyeva has not been heard from since she left for the meeting, Ms. Lokshina said, adding that Ms. Ersenoyeva had left eagerly after a caller told her that they had good news about her daughter, who in August had vanished as well, after gunmen seized her from the street.
Link
rock star, and have posted more than one thread in the politcal forum attacking the terrorists in Chechnya, including a celebratory thread when Basayev (Belsan school mastermind) was killed by Russian Intell. Nobody has glorified the Chechen terrorists, which U.S. and NATO troops have also fought, and killed, in Afghanistan.