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 detained Chechens as vagrants and forced them to sign confessions that they had fought in the Armed Forces of Ichkeria or helped them.
In 1995, in its orders for the detention of Chechens, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs most often referred to decree No. 1815 of Russian president Yeltsin of 2 November 1993 "On Measures to Prevent Vagrancy and Begging"[1]. Most of the detained Chechens had their documents on them, and some of them the ministry took from their own homes[2]. The first thing the occupiers did was tear up their identity papers in front of their eyes[3].
Russian investigators demanded that the detainees confess to helping the army of Ichkeria and told them, blindfolded, to sign papers they could not see[3]. The occupiers extracted confessions by torture, including with electric current, in pits and prison vans at checkpoints and military units (see: "Torture and Abuse")[2].
The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs released most of the detained Chechens without charges. 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 filtration camps for detainees in Mozdok, a town in Russian-controlled North Ossetia, and in Grozny. The ministry handed a hundred of them over to investigators (see: "Filtration Camp System")[2].
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from 28 January 1995 to July 1996 the ministry charged 51 people of those who had passed through the camp in Grozny, released 1,024 and exchanged 109 for captured Russian servicemen[2].
On 1 February 1995, Ilyushenko, acting prosecutor general of Russia, charged Dzhokhar Dudayev, the elected president of Ichkeria, with high treason and incitement to terrorism on the basis of a telephone conversation which the prosecutors said they had intercepted[4]. The Prosecutor General's Office put the president of Ichkeria on a wanted list, and on 21 April 1996 the Russian military killed him near Gekhi-Chu, a village southwest of Grozny (see: "Neutralization of the Opposition")[2][5]. On 6 April 1995, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs took 16 Chechens out of the filtration camps and forced each of them to sign a paper that called him a fighter of the army of Ichkeria, although, by their own account, none of them had fought. In Malye Atagi, a village south of Grozny, the ministry handed them over to the army of Ichkeria in exchange for a captured Russian major (see: "Hostage-Taking")[6].
On 15 March 1996, Russian soldiers at the checkpoint near Samashki, a village in the west of Ichkeria, detained 91 Chechens who were leaving the village before the assault. Russian investigators interrogated the detainees in the prisons of Pyatigorsk and Stavropol, cities in the south of Russia. One of them, Murat Ganiev, told Human Rights Watch on 14 October 1996: "I told them I wasn't a fighter. … They said that if I said I was a fighter they would release the other forty-six. The only thing they gave us to sign was our release papers"[7]. Five weeks after the detention, on 19 April 1996, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs released all the Chechens from Samashki without charges[2].
In a report of January 1997, Human Rights Watch wrote that the Russian government had not disclosed how many Chechens from the filtration camps it was holding in prison on charges of taking part in the fighting, or under which articles they had been tried[7].
By January 1997, when the last Russian troops had left Ichkeria, deputies of the Russian parliament had drafted an amnesty only for Russian servicemen. This draft did not allow the release of Chechens who were held in custody for taking part, or allegedly taking part, in the fighting[7]. On 12 March 1997, the deputies in Moscow, by resolution No. 1199-II, declared an amnesty for crimes connected with the war, but did not extend it to those charged and convicted under 17 articles of the Criminal Code, including for banditry and murder. The deputies allowed cases under these articles to be closed only against those whom Russia handed over in exchange for its own servicemen and citizens held in Ichkeria[8].