From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 6/12/2006 3:45 AM
Photo from www.ej.ru Photo from www.ej.ru Russian HR Group Uncovers Secret Torture Cell Used by Pro-Moscow Chechen Police
09.06.2006
MosNews
One of Russia’s leading human rights groups, Memorial, has produced what it says is documentary evidence of a secret torture and murder cell in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya , The Independent daily reported Friday.
According to Memorial, Russian police used the dungeon to torture and murder hundreds of people, whose corpses were later dumped across the small, mainly Muslim, republic.
Memorial alleges that the torture cell, located in the basement of a former school for deaf children in Grozny’s Oktyabrskaya district, was decommissioned only last month, when the federal Russian police unit occupying the building withdrew.
The claims undermine Kremlin assurances that life in Chechnya is “getting back to normal” and directly implicate the authorities in the unlawful abduction and extrajudicial execution of civilians.
Memorial says it collected the evidence just in time and that the building housing the cellar has since been demolished and the graffiti expunged from the walls in a crude attempt at a cover-up. What is clear is that the cellar was used to interrogate people suspected of collaborating with separatists resisting the republic’s Moscow-backed government. Human rights activists allege that many of these so-called “terror suspects” are innocent civilians and that they are often punished because one of their relatives is a rebel.
The Moscow-backed Chechen authorities have categorically denied Memorial’s allegations, though the republic’s prosecutor, Valery Kuznetsov, is investigating. Mr Kuznetsov has already claimed that it was common knowledge that there were “temporary holding cells” beneath the building. He insists their existence was “official and not a secret object”. Samples have been taken from the cells’ walls for analysis and if they turn out to be human blood, Mr Kuznetsov has promised further tests. Several criminal cases involving the disappearance of people allegedly dispatched to the cells are being investigated.
Nurdi Nukhajiev, Chechnya’s government-appointed representative for human rights, was sceptical about Memorial’s claims.
“I am not saying that angels served there [in the cells],” he said. “I am not saying that the people [policemen] were ideal individuals. But this is 2006 and they weren’t so stupid as to leave evidence of torture and murder behind.”
Russian news agency Regnum reported that Chechen prosecutors have instigated a criminal case into the incident against the military servicemen of the combined unit of the Khanty-Mancy District (troops from various regions of the Russian Feredation are being sent to fight rebels in Chechnya). Oksana Rogozina, an aide to the Chief Chechen Prosecutor told the agency that the report about tortures will be checked within the investigation of this case. The official said that there were no more information on the case, but stressed that the suspects’ complicity in tortures was yet to be proved.
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