Second Chechen War crimes and terrorism

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Human rights campaigners estimate that since September 1999 - the start of the second Chechen conflict - as many as 5,000 people have disappeared and are feared dead.^[1] According to Amnesty International in 2005, Russian officials give about 2,000 as the official figure for "disappearances" since late 1999.^[2]

• In March 2001
  Russian federal forces in Chechnya a major human rights crisis that the international community
  must address.
• On March 31, 2003,
  Chechen Republic, has suggested that Russian federal forces are behind breaking into homes at night and abducting people. "People continue to go missing in Chechnya. They are taken away in the middle of the night. Their bodies are not found and they are never seen again," Kadyrov said to reporters in Grozny. "Through their crimes, they maintain tension in the republic, and their hands are stained with the blood of innocent people. The force is made up of kidnappers in armoured vehicles. They are a death squad
  ."
• On February 25–26, 2006,
  forced disappearances of people in Chechnya cannot be solved by local authorities, adding that a special commission has to be created at federal level.^{[citation needed}
  ]
• On May 12, 2006, Dmitry Grushkin of the 'Memorial' human rights group told Interfax that at least 1,893 residents of Chechnya had been kidnapped since 2002; of those, he said, 653 were found alive, 186 were found dead, and 1,023 "disappeared". 'Memorial' monitors kidnappings for only 25-30 percent of Chechen territory.^{[citation needed]}
• On November 13, 2006, HRW published a briefing paper on torture in Chechnya that it had prepared for the 37th session of the
  crime against humanity
  ."

Mass hostage takings

Moscow theater hostage crisis

On October 23, 2002, over 40 terrorists took more than 700 hostages prisoner at a Moscow theater. The hostage-takers demanded an end to the Russian presence in Chechnya, and threatened to execute the hostages if their conditions were not met. The siege ended violently on October 26, when Russian troops were forced to storm the building after the detonation of some explosive devices inside. Many casualties resulted from the fact that unconscious victims' airways were blocked and sub-optimal care was given during the rescue. In particular, the failure of Russian authorities to equip their troops with opioid antidotes and their efforts to conceal the identity of the gas for days afterward hindered efforts to save the lives of the stricken hostages.

On November 2 Shamil Basayev assumed responsibility for the attack and apologized to Aslan Maskhadov for not informing him of the plan.

Beslan school siege

On September 1, 2004, a group of 32 heavily armed, masked men seized control of Middle School Number One and more than 1,000 hostages in

Russian officials publicly linked Baseyev and Maskhadov to the attack. Baseyev claimed responsibility in a September 17 website publication; Maskhadov denounced the attacks and denied involvement. The carnage at Beslan and the outcry it caused has had an unexpected effect on the tactics employed by Chechen separatists and their allies.

Other hostage incidents

• March 15, 2001 - Three Chechens
  Tu-154 aircraft with 174 people on board after it left Turkey; they forced it to land in Medina, Saudi Arabia. On March 16, Saudi commandos freed over 100 hostages, killing three people including a hijacker, a female flight attendant and a Turkish
  passenger. A Russian diplomat in Saudi Arabia said the leader of the hijackers was a "highly-trained military officer who appears to know what he is doing."
• April 22, 2001 - In Turkey pro-Chechen gunmen seized up to 100 hostages at a luxury hotel in Istanbul. The standoff lasted nearly 12 hours before the hostage-takers, armed with automatic rifles, surrendered; police said they had encountered no resistance from the gunmen and there were no reports of anybody being injured.^[3]

• October 29, 2004 - The
  anti-terrorism
  strategy. As he explained it to the deputies, in future hostage-taking episodes the security agencies would have a formal statutory right to seize and detain the relatives of the suspected hostage-takers. The government would then let the terrorists know that it will do to these "counter-hostages" whatever the terrorists do to their own hostages.

Meanwhile, the practice of taking civilians hostages exists among the officers of Russian and local security agencies in Chechnya. On March 1, 2004, officers of security agencies seized more than 30 relatives of former

• June 3, 2006 - Russian diplomats in Iraq were seized when
  their convoy was waylaid by the Mujahedeen Shura Council. One was shot during the kidnapping; three others were later executed. The group hoped to pressure Russia into allowing Chechnya to secede and become an Islamic theocracy
  .

• On October 5, 1999, a bus filled with refugees was reportedly hit by a Russian tank shell, killing as many as 40 civilians and wounding several others.^[4]
• On October 7, 1999, federal forces carried out a cluster bomb attack on the village of Elistanzhy in Vedensky District. Within several minutes 27 people were killed; among them only eight were men of "fighting age", meaning aged 14 to 60. In the next two weeks, 21 more died of their wounds.
• On October 21, 1999, a series of Russian
  maternity hospital and a mosque
  .
• On October 24, 1999, seven children were killed and 14 maimed by a Russian tank attack in Novy Sharoy; an adult man was also killed.^[5]
• On October 29, 1999, the
  Red Cross
  workers, two journalists and many women and children.
• On February 4, 2000, in an attempt to stop the Chechen retreat, Russian forces bombed the village of Katyr-Yurt, then a civilian convoy under white flags, killing at least 170 civilians, while many more were injured.
• On February 9, 2000, a Russian tactical missile hit a crowd of people who had come to the local administration building in Shali, a town declared to be one of the "safe areas", to collect their pensions. The missile is estimated to have killed some 150 civilians, and was followed by an attack by combat helicopters causing further casualties. The Russian attack, which happened without any warning, was a response to infiltration of the town by a group of Chechen fighters who suffered few casualties.^[6]

Documented mass killings

• On December 3, 1999, at least 40 people fleeing the besieged Grozny
  were shot and killed
  by Russian troops, leaving only seven wounded survivors.
• In early December 1999, Russian troops under the command of General Vladimir Shamanov killed up to 41 civilians during a two-week drunken rampage in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, near Grozny.
• In several incidents during December 1999 and January 2000 in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny, Russian troops killed
  at least 50 unarmed civilians
  , mostly elderly men and women.
• A particularly brutal
  St Petersburg and contract soldiers summarily executed at least 60 civilians
  .
• Following the March 2000 Battle of Komsomolskoye about 70 Chechen combatants who were taken prisoner were officially amnestied, but almost all of them are believed to have been murdered in captivity.

From, 1999-2004, the Chernokozovo detention center operated as a filtration and torture camp, and human rights abuses were documented in the facility.

Rebel bombings

• September 6–14, 1999 -
  hexogen (RDX) killed 307 and injured 1,700 people. Four buildings in Moscow
  , Buinaksk and Volgodonsk were destroyed.
• May 9, 2002 - An explosion of a Russian-made anti-personnel mine in the Dagestani town of Kaspiysk killed 45 and wounded some 175 soldiers and civilian bystanders during a military parade. A Dagestani pro-Chechen group blamed for an attack had previously killed seven Russian soldiers on January 18, 2001, in the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala.
• June 12, 2005 - A bomb planted by Russian
  veterans of the Chechen wars belonging to the Russian National Unity
  group, derailed the Grozny-Moscow passenger train some 150 kilometers south of the Russian capital. Dozens of people were injured, but only eight hospitalized. On May 30, 2006, suspects Vladimir Vlasov and Mikhail Klevachyov were charged with terrorism and attempting to commit murder motivated by ethnic or religious hatred.

• July 5, 2003 - 19-year-old
  airfield near Moscow. Her bomb did not detonate as expected. 15 minutes later, only a few meters from the site of the first attack, 26-year-old Zinaida Alijeva
  detonated her explosives and killed 11 people instantly. Four more died in hospital. For many observers, the Tushino attacks appeared out of place.
• December 5–10, 2003 - A
  another blast shook Russia—this time five people were killed and 44 injured in Red Square
  in the very heart of Moscow. Shamil Basayev later claimed responsibility for organising the December 2003 attacks.
• February 6, 2004 - A bomb ripped through a Moscow
  killing 40 people and wounding 134
  . A previously unknown Chechen rebel group claimed responsibility for the bombing; the claim came from a group calling itself Gazoton Murdash, and was signed by Lom-Ali ("Ali the Lion"). According to the statement, the group launched the attack to mark the fourth anniversary of the killing of scores of Chechen civilians by Russian soldiers who took control of the Chechen capital Grozny.
• August 27, 2004 - 123 people were killed by a female suicide bomber in the
  Russian aircraft bombings of August 2004
  . Basayev again claimed responsibility.

During the

• One of the earliest war crimes trials to be held was that of
  prison colony a year later.^[7]
• On February 21, 2001, a Chechen field commander
  video tape. When Russia invaded Chechnya for the second time in September 1999, the video became a powerful weapon in the Kremlin's propaganda war, as it was shown to soldiers preparing for active service in the war-torn republic.^[8] Temirbulatov was also accused of terrorism and abducting Russian special unit servicemen taken prisoner during their raid into Chechnya in 1997.^[9]
• On May 26, 2006, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was jailed for life for his part in the Beslan school siege.

Trials of Russian servicemen

The cases of a Russian servicemen being tried for war crimes are few and far between, no one has been charged with mistreatment or the murder of captured enemy fighters. Nevertheless, several servicemen have been accused and convicted of crimes against civilians.

• On July 25, 2003, after a series of trials and retrials, Russian tank unit commander
  prison colony in Dmitrovgrad but he did not arrive at his destination, a prison colony in Ulyanovsk Oblast.^[10]
• On April 29, 2004, a
  silenced weapons; the commandos then burned the bodies in the victims' vehicle. They were found not guilty in a retrial on May 19, 2005. Although the four admitted the killings, the court ruled that their actions were not punishable as they had been following orders. The acquittals of Cpt. Ulman and his three subordinates sparked a public outrage in Chechnya, where rights advocates and many Chechens say Russian forces act with impunity. During the third court hearing Ulman and the two officers mysteriously disappeared. In 2007, they officers were all found guilty and received prison sentences ranging from 9 to 14 years. Aleksei Perelevsky, the only officer present for the trial, received a 9-year sentence.^[10][11]
• On March 29, 2005, a court in Grozny found
  Zelimkhan Murdalov
  in January 2001, and sentenced him to 11 years imprisonment, which was reduced to 10.5 years on appeal.
• On October 27, 2005, Mukhadi Aziyev, a company commander of the Vostok (East)
  Avar civilians on Chechnya's border with Dagestan
  .
• On April 5, 2006, Alexey Krivoshonok, a Russian serviceman, accused of killing three Chechen civilians at a roadblock in November 2005, admitted his guilt in his final plea. Next day, Krivoshonok, a contract soldier since 1995 whose rank was not disclosed, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for violent murder while under a state of alcoholic and narcotic intoxication.
• On May 15, 2006, the Grozny Garrison Military Circuit Court completed the trial of contract soldier, Private Pavel Zinchuk. He was sentenced to seven years in a general penal colony for shooting and wounding from "hooligan motives" three civilian persons in the village of Staraya Sunzha near Grozny.
• On December 27, 2007, Lt. Sergei Arakcheyev and Lt. Yevgeny Khudyakov were convicted by a Rostov-on-Don military court of the January 2003 of the killing of three local construction workers at a checkpoint in Chechnya and sentenced to 15 and 17 years in prison, respectively. According to court papers, Khudyakov and Arakcheyev forced the victims out of their truck, ordered them to lie on the ground and shot them dead; the bodies were doused in fuel and set on fire. Khudyakov failed to appear for the verdict and the court said police would search nationwide for him. He was arrested in 2017. In 2022, Khudyakov was released from prison early after volunteering for service in the Wagner Group in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He was killed in action on 10 September 2022.^[12][13][14]

European Court of Human Rights

In October 2004, the

As of November 2007, 23 cases were decided^[15] by the Court. The cases include:

• The first
  NGOs claim that the applicants to the court have experienced persecution, including murders and disappearance.^[17]
• In summer 2006 the ECHR decided the first cases concerning forced disappearances from Chechnya; more than 100 disappearance cases related to Chechnya were pending in the court.
  Defense Ministry forces in the North Caucasus.^[20]
• On October 12, 2006, the Court held the
  Russian state responsible for the summary execution of the Estamirov family during the February 5, 2000 Novye Aldi massacre by OMON forces. "Russian and Chechen security forces should take this decision as a warning that the abuse and murder of innocent civilians cannot be met by impunity," said Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.^[21]
  At least 11 other incidents of summary executions committed on the same day in the same region of Chechnya were pending before the Court.
• On November 9, 2006, the Court ruled the Russian government complicit in the murder and abduction of three Chechen civilians, including a case on the disappearance and presumed death of two Chechens from the same family. The court sided with Marzet Imakayeva, a Chechen woman who fled Russia two years ago to seek
  Nura Luluyeva turned up in a mass grave
  eight months later.
• On January 8, 2007, the Court condemned Russia in the first torture case from Chechnya to be heard by the ECHR. In its judgment,^[22] the Court stated that the applicants Adam and Arbi Chitayev had been held in unacknowledged detention, that they had been subjected to torture, and that the Russian authorities had not properly investigated their allegations.

See also

• Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush
• International response to the Second Chechen War
• Russian war crimes

References

External links

• Human rights violations attributed to Russian forces Council of Europe
• List of terror attacks 2001-2004
• Cases from Chechnya pending before the European Court of Human Rights
• "As I was raped by the Chechens." Confession of a victim