in the campaign “First Russian-Chechen War (1994–1996)”
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 abducted Chechens and concealed information about their fate, whereabouts or condition from their relatives.
Russian servicemen, fighters of OMON (police special forces) and of the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia) detained Chechens at checkpoints and led them away from their homes, sometimes at night[1][2][3]. Russian soldiers checked passports against arrest lists, which they received from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, detained Chechens by them even with documents and passes, and then handed them over to the headquarters of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in Ichkeria. Women and old people also ended up on these lists[4].
Russian servicemen and police officers did not let detained Chechens inform their families about themselves, and their relatives considered them missing. The occupiers put the abducted in pits at military units and did not register the arrest (see: "Filtration Camp System")[2][3].
The Russian military transported detained Chechens from commandant's offices to filtration camps, and on the way people often disappeared without a trace. When relatives found out where a person was being held, the Russian guards immediately moved him elsewhere[4].
To inquiries about missing people who appeared on the lists of the filtration camps, Russian agencies replied that these people had been released[2]. The Chechen society "Victims of War" searched for Chechens whom the occupiers had detained in Grozny and at checkpoints from 11 December 1994 to May 1995, and did not find a single one of them on the Russian list of 252 released. At the addresses from the Russian lists, the women of the society found no people with such surnames[4].
Relatives of the missing filed statements with the society "Victims of War". As of 8 August 1995, 1308 peaceful citizens of Ichkeria were listed as missing[2]. By mid-October 1996, the society's list held 1432 missing Chechens[5]. In the spring of 1997, Ichkeria handed Russia a list of 1563 missing[2].
The Russian military tortured and killed some of the abducted, and relatives later found their bodies where Russian units had been stationed (see: "Killing of Prisoners and Detainees")[2].
On 9 January 1995, the occupiers detained Shamsa Magomadov in Grozny, and the guards of the filtration camp in Mozdok, a town in Russian-controlled North Ossetia, recorded that they had released him on 2 February[4]. Shamsa Magomadov did not return home, and in the winter of 1995-1996 the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs promised his sister to exchange her brother for a captured Russian soldier (see: "Hostage-Taking")[4][2]. On 21 May 1995, at checkpoint No. 13 near Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria, the Russian military detained Ruslan Parshoev from that village, and the Russian major Morozov took him to his unit near Assinovskaya, a stanitsa in the west of Ichkeria. The next day, Lvov, the chief of staff of the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in Ichkeria, ordered the detainee sent to Khankala, the main base of the occupation troops on the eastern outskirts of Grozny, where he was taken by fighters of the "Rus" special forces unit, and Ruslan Parshoev went missing[2]. In the summer of 1995, the occupiers abducted at a checkpoint on the road to Grozny Khamad Kurbanov, the representative of the president of Ichkeria in Russia, who had just been released after a month without charge in a Moscow prison[6]. Russian guards held Khamad Kurbanov in a pit near Assinovskaya and in the filtration camp in Grozny until a commission under the international OSCE mission secured his release at the negotiations between Russia and Ichkeria[4]. On 23 December 1995, the Russian military, working from lists, took Ruslan Soslambekov, chairman of the movement "People's Diplomacy for Peace and Unity", at a checkpoint at the entrance to Grozny, kept him for 28 days in the filtration camp on the outskirts of the city, then released him[3].
In February 1996, the Russian military stopped at checkpoints 26 acquaintances of Madina Magomadova from the society "Victims of War", and all of them disappeared[4].
At dawn on 1 August 1996, OMON fighters of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in helicopters, jeeps and armored personnel carriers attacked the settlement of Dolinsky north-west of Grozny[7]. Movla Idrisov from Dolinsky told a Reuters correspondent on the day of the raid that the OMON men went into the first and second floors, led away all the men they found, and left one: a 65-year-old with one leg, on crutches[8]. The urgent action of Amnesty International of 6 August 1996 says that the OMON men led away 18 Chechens, among them Aslanbek Gassayev and Umakh Mogamedov: "The men were led with sacks over their heads to a waiting bus and driven away. They have not been seen since"[7]. In 1996, the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances requested from Russia information on the fate of two of them, and in 1997 Russia replied that their cases were being investigated by the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB[9][10].
On 24 August 1996, eight Russian soldiers led away from a yard in Grozny Aleksei Karmayev, a 67-year-old disabled man who had complained to the headquarters of the 276th Regiment of the Russian army about looting, after which the disabled man went missing[5][11].
By the end of October 1996, the prison department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs replied to a list of more than 1300 missing, handed over after the ceasefire in June 1996, that forty people from the list had been held in custody and released, but all forty had been released before 1993, before the war. About the rest the department said nothing. On 22 January 1997, Izmailov, an officer of the Russian search group, said on air on the ORT television channel that the missing Chechens were most likely no longer alive, and did not specify whether the Russian military had killed them in battle or shot them on detention, or whether they had died in custody[5]. In January 1998, the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances reported that Russia had not clarified the fate of a single missing person about whom it had been asked[10].
On 10 June 1996, the working groups of Russia and Ichkeria on the search for the missing agreed to stop detentions based on lists and other papers without legal force[12].
In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table[13]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")[14]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic[2].