Torture and Abuse

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 beat and tortured detained Chechens.

Russian soldiers together with police officers beat them at checkpoints and during "zachistki" ("sweeps", as Russians called house searches and detentions of Chechens)^[1]. The occupiers' escorts beat them in trucks and helicopters. On unloading, the soldiers made them run between two rows of guards, who beat the running men with clubs and rifle butts^[2][1].

During interrogations, Russian servicemen and police officers demanded that Chechens admit they had fought, name soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria and the places where weapons were hidden^[2]. In pits, prison vans and tanks, Russian guards held them for several days with their hands tied, blindfolded, without water or food^[2][3]. The occupiers released the beaten prisoners without charges or gave them up for exchange for captured Russian servicemen (see: "Hostage-Taking")^[2].

Russian servicemen and police officers, from soldiers at checkpoints to military investigators at bases, tortured Chechens from December 1994 to September 1996. On 25 December 1994, near the settlement of Dolinsky northwest of Grozny, Russian soldiers detained and beat Ali Israilov from Sernovodsk, a village in the west of Ichkeria. The guards of the camp in Mozdok, a town in Russian-controlled North Ossetia, beat him for three more days and released him. After the beatings, Ali Israilov spent a month and a half in treatment^[4].

Until the end of January 1995, the OMON from Ryazan, a Russian police unit, guarded the filtration camp of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in Mozdok and tortured detained Chechens during interrogations in prison railcars (see: "Filtration Camp System"). The guards whom the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent to replace them on 24-26 January did not torture during interrogations, but beat the prisoners^[2].

On 1 January 1995, Russian soldiers detained Zakrail Vairayev near the cannery in Grozny, and the guards in Mozdok and in Pyatigorsk, a city in the south of Russia, beat him so badly that his chest cracked and his tuberculosis flared up. The guards of the Mozdok camp left him, sick, in a prison railcar for eight days and then sent him to a hospital in Nazran, a town in Russian-controlled Ingushetia^[4]. From 3 January to 15 February 1995, the guards of the camp near the cannery in Grozny, the escorts and the guards of the prisons in Pyatigorsk and in Stavropol, another city in the south of Russia, beat Magomed Meiriev from Grozny, and in Pyatigorsk they set a dog on him. On 15 February, the occupiers released him in Mozdok with scars from rifle butts and bites^[4]. On 23 January 1995, at checkpoint No. 13 between Sernovodsk and the neighboring village of Samashki, officers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs beat Akhmed Idrisov from Grozny, threatening to kill him, and on 31 January released him as innocent, with broken ribs^[4]. In the spring of 1995, the guards of the camp near the cannery in Grozny gave the prisoners urine instead of water^[5]. On 25 March 1995, Russian soldiers detained the Chechen Isani Khanoyev in his home in Assinovskaya, a stanitsa in the west of Ichkeria. The guards of the military unit near the stanitsa beat him at night and tortured him with electric current, and on 6 April the Ministry of Internal Affairs released him from Mozdok as innocent^[2].

From the end of January 1995, Russian servicemen held detained Chechens in pits and prison vans at military units, where human rights defenders and prosecutors were not allowed. There were such pits in Khankala, the main base of the occupation troops on the eastern outskirts of Grozny, and near Assinovskaya^[2].

On 7 April 1995, the Internal Troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (predecessors of today's Rosgvardia) stormed Samashki. That day, officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs detained at a checkpoint Makhmudemin Iziev from Samashki, who was leaving with his family for Sernovodsk, and sent him by helicopter to the field command post of the Russian troops near Assinovskaya^[2]. On 8 April, soldiers of the Internal Troops beat Chechen men and teenagers with rifle butts during searches in Samashki, and at the military unit north of the village and near Assinovskaya soldiers set dogs on them^[1][6][7]. Near Assinovskaya, the guards held Makhmudemin Iziev for three days without water or food in a prison van at the bottom of a pit. During interrogations, the servicemen beat him in the kidneys and the chest, attached wires to his neck and tortured him with electric current, which left burns^[1][2]. On 10 April, the occupiers sent him by helicopter to the filtration camp in Mozdok, and that day six underage Chechens from Samashki were released from there bruised and with bite marks^[1][6][7]. Before the visit of representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross on 11-13 April, the camp guards threatened the detained Chechens: "They will leave, and you will stay here"^[1]. On 18 April, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs released Makhmudemin Iziev as innocent. On 20 April, in Sernovodsk, he told the "Memorial" observers about Mozdok: "During interrogations they beat me again and threatened to shoot me. The investigator himself did not beat me; people in masks did the beating when he left the compartment"^[2].

In the summer of 1995, the guards near Assinovskaya hung Ramzan Isayev from Alkhan-Yurt, a village southwest of Grozny, by his handcuffs, burned his feet with a torch, squeezed his head with a metal hoop and tortured him with electric current, and then the occupiers gave him up in exchange for a captive from the Russian army^[2]. In July 1995, Russian soldiers put Mikael Ivgiev, a journalist of the Chechen magazine "Orga", for two weeks into a tank buried in the ground in Khankala, where the servicemen tortured him with electric current and hung him by his hands tied behind his back; Mikael Ivgiev survived^[2]. On 23 December 1995, Russian servicemen detained Ruslan Soslambekov at a checkpoint at the entrance to Grozny and held him for 28 days in a camp of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in garages on the outskirts of the city, where the guards, in front of him, set dogs on prisoners and beat their insides to a pulp, and then released him^[8].

In early 1996, the guards of the camp in Grozny hung a Chechen horizontally and beat him, and the doctors of City Hospital No. 9 treated him for broken ribs^[3][9]. In February 1996, the occupiers brought for exchange to Shatoy, a district center in the mountains in the south of Ichkeria, a captured Chechen beaten so badly that he was carried out of the armored personnel carrier in people's arms, and the army of Ichkeria gave up Russian soldiers for him^[2]. In March 1996, soldiers of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs held three Chechens from the checkpoint between Goity and Starye Atagi, villages south of Grozny, for thirteen days in a railway tank car in Khankala, staged their execution and cut them with a knife, and in April military investigators in Khankala drove needles under the fingernails of Saidash Shamakhurov from the village of Gikalovo. The occupiers gave all four up for exchange (see: "Hostage-Taking")^[3].

In May 1995, Sergei Kovalyov, head of the Observer Mission of Russian human rights defenders, wrote that his group had interviewed more than a hundred Chechens, former prisoners of the Russian occupiers. According to him, the occupiers beat and humiliated almost every one of them, and tortured many^[10]. In September 1995, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture wrote to the government of Russia that camp guards systematically beat many prisoners to extract confessions of support for Dzhokhar Dudayev^[7]. The human rights defenders of "Memorial" write that most of the people who passed through the filtration camps complained of cruel treatment, and that forensic medical examinations confirm their accounts. According to the "Memorial" report, in the pits at military units the occupiers tortured more and more often, and near Assinovskaya also in 1996^[2]. In January 1997, the human rights defenders of Human Rights Watch wrote that in 1996 Russian servicemen continued to torture Chechens in Khankala^[3]. It is unknown how many such crimes the occupation troops committed from December 1994 to September 1996. The human rights defenders of "Memorial" published the accounts of detained Chechens about beatings and torture in the camps in the winter and spring of 1995^[4].

Russian courts convicted not a single occupier for the torture and abuse of Chechens (see: "Impunity of Perpetrators")^[2].

In August 1996, the Armed Forces of Ichkeria liberated Grozny from the occupiers, forcing Russia to the negotiating table^[11]. On 31 August 1996, peace agreements were signed in Khasavyurt (see: "Sham Treaties")^[12]. Russian servicemen held Chechens at their bases in Grozny and in Khankala at least until the end of September^[2]. On 31 December 1996, the last Russian troops left the republic^[2].