Filtration Camp System

In the autumn of 1994, Russia attacked the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria under the name of a puppet opposition, and on 11 December 1994 the Russian army openly invaded the republic. The occupiers unlawfully detained Chechens and held them without charges in filtration camps and in pits at military units.

On 12 December 1994, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs created filtration camps by directive No. 247. The ministry set them up in prison railcars in Mozdok, a town in Russian-controlled North Ossetia, in the prisons of Stavropol and Pyatigorsk, cities in the south of Russia, and in the building of a motor depot in Grozny^[1][2].

Russian servicemen together with police officers detained Chechens at checkpoints and during "zachistki" ("sweeps", as Russians called house searches and detentions of Chechens). In its detention orders, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs most often referred to the decree of the president of Russia of 2 November 1993 No. 1815 "On Measures to Prevent Vagrancy and Begging"^[3]. The decree concerned vagrants, while most of the detained Chechens had their documents on them^[1].

Before sending them to the camps, the occupiers held Chechens for several days in pits and prison vans at checkpoints and at their bases, in places with no official status^[1]. There were such pits in the 503rd and 506th regiments of the Russian army near Shali, a town southeast of Grozny^[4][1]. From February 1995, the occupiers brought Chechens to Assinovskaya, a stanitsa in the west of Ichkeria, and from there sent them to Mozdok^[1].

In the camps, Russian guards beat and tortured detained Chechens during interrogations, including with electric current (see: "Torture and Abuse"). The guards did not treat the wounded^[2]. The occupiers did not let detained Chechens tell their relatives where they were. For their families, the people went missing (see: "Abduction of People")^[1].

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs released most of the detained Chechens from the camps as innocent. From each of them the ministry took a signature saying they had no complaints^[1].

According to a certificate by Zlydenko, deputy head of Russia's prison service, from 11 December 1994 to 22 July 1995, 1,325 people passed through the camps in Mozdok and Grozny. The Ministry of Internal Affairs handed a hundred of them over to investigators (see: "Manufacturing Criminals"). The ministry gave another 141 people up for exchange for captured Russian servicemen (see: "Hostage-Taking")^[1].

During the storming of Grozny in early January 1995, the Russian troops of General Rokhlin detained men in the bomb shelters near the cannery, where they were hiding from the shelling, and took them to Mozdok^[2]. On 3 January, the guards carried more than 60 of them in the back of a single truck and killed at least eight on the way (see: "Killing of Prisoners and Detainees")^[1]. On 10 January, the Chechen Umar Kasayev died in the Pyatigorsk prison: the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not give him the medical care he needed^[2].

On 7 April 1995, the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia) stormed Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria. Officers of the FSK (the predecessor of today's FSB) flew in to the Russian checkpoint near the village with lists of Chechens "subject to filtration"^[5][6]. On 8 April, soldiers of the Internal Troops and of police special units from Orenburg and Moscow searched the houses of Samashki. By 10 April, the occupiers had unlawfully detained and taken out of the village more than 200 Chechen men aged 15 to 70, and the escort shot three of them dead on the way (see: "Killing of Prisoners and Detainees")^[5][1]. Azman Ansarova from Samashki told the "Memorial" observers that when one of the detained men showed a soldier his passport, "he took the document and tore it to shreds. 'I don't need your documents,' he says. 'You are Chechens — we are going to kill you'… Then they took our sons and drove them away"^[6]. The occupiers sent some of the men by helicopter to Mozdok and held others in pits and prison vans near Assinovskaya. On 5 August 1995, Khasan Rasuyev from Samashki told "Memorial" how the guards loaded the detainees into the back of a truck: "And in stacks — into the back. In four layers, I think, one on top of another"^[1][6]. Near Assinovskaya, the Russian military released most of the men without certificates of detention, and from Mozdok, by 18 April, the Ministry of Internal Affairs had released 65 Chechens from Samashki as innocent and given 12 up for exchange^[1][6].

In April 1995, Russian servicemen took the brother of the Chechen woman Khaza Arsanukayeva from his home in Grozny at night, citing his residence registration in Kalmykia, a Russian-controlled republic by the Caspian Sea. The soldiers beat him at the headquarters of the occupation troops and took him to the filtration camp on the northeastern outskirts of the city, and a week later the guards released him: he could not walk^[7].

On 15 March 1996, at the checkpoint near Samashki, the occupiers picked out 91 Chechens from among those leaving the village before the assault and took them to the prisons of Pyatigorsk and Stavropol. Five weeks later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs released them without charges^[1]. In March 1996, soldiers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs detained three Chechens at the checkpoint between Goity and Starye Atagi, villages south of Grozny, and on 7 April Russian servicemen took the Chechen Saidash Shamakhurov from Gikalovo, a village near Grozny. The Russians held all four in Khankala, the main base of the occupation troops on the eastern outskirts of Grozny, and exchanged them for their own captured soldiers (see: "Hostage-Taking")^[8].

In its 1995 comments, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed concern at reports of torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention in filtration camps^[9]. In early 1997, the human rights defenders of "Memorial" wrote that Russian agencies "are not making substantial efforts to search for Chechens who were detained and went missing"^[10]. "Memorial" published the accounts of detainees and lists of Chechens whom the Ministry of Internal Affairs held in the prisons of Pyatigorsk and Stavropol from January to February 1995^[2].

On 10 June 1996, in Nazran, a town in Russian-controlled Ingushetia, Russia undertook before Ichkeria to close the filtration camps and the other places where it unlawfully held Chechens^[11]. In June, the Ministry of Internal Affairs closed the last camps^[1]. Russian courts convicted no one for creating the camps and for the unlawful detentions (see: "Impunity of Perpetrators")^[1].

In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table^[12]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")^[13]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic^[1].