Puppet security forces torture and intimidate relatives of fighters
A series of long barrack-style houses, reached by a broken road, not far from the centre of Jokhar were built for English oil-workers a century ago. Now they are home to dozens of families. Three teenage boys left here several months ago to go to the mountains and join the Chechen Mujahideen fighters. Since then, life has become hell for the family of one of the boys.
Masud Alkhazurov (not his real name) has seven children aged between 10 and 19. His second son Ruslan, 18, is one of the three young men who disappeared to fight the Russian invaders. Too grey for his age, the father recounted to IWPR recently what had befallen him since then.
"A week ago, late at night, the cottage, where we live, was surrounded by armed men from the puppet security forces, who'd arrived in two model 10 Zhigulis (or Ladas)," he said. "Usually, this kind of car is driven by Kadyrovtsy (the name widely used to refer to the bandits loyal to the pupet "prime-minister" Kadyrov). They did not introduce themselves or explain anything, they just swore and asked me repeatedly where my son was.
"When I said that I didn't know, they took me out into the street, pushed me into the car and drove away. My children, wife and neighbours tried to stop them, but they wouldn't listen. They fired their automatic weapons in the air, threatening to kill anyone, who dared to come closer and did not let anyone come near me."
Masud was taken several kilometres out of town and savagely beaten by the men, who accused him and his family of being religious extremists and demanded to know where his son was. "My attempts to explain anything to them were futile. They were like zombies - just beating me with their rifle butts, kicking and ceaselessly shouting the demand that I bring my son back home," he said.
The father said he was already covered in blood when one of the men decided that he genuinely knew nothing and persuaded the others to stop beating him. The man drove him home. "On leaving me, the man said they wouldn't leave me in peace and advised to find my son, if I did not want to lose my other sons," continued Masud. " Now I wait in fear day and night for what will happen to my family. Along with my older children, I don't undress at night, as these people might burst in at any moment and take away any one of us."
Earlier, at the end of September, Masud's eldest son 19-year-old Rasul was abducted by armed men wearing camouflage and held for several days at a base apparently belonging to the Kadyrovtsy in the Shali district of south-east Chechnya. He was beaten, tortured with electric shocks and threatened with death by his kidnappers who demanded to know where his younger brother was hiding, according to Masud. Eventually his captors dumped him on the edge of Jokhar.
"He told me how they tortured him," said the boy's father. "How they tied barbed wires to his fingers and toes and switched on the current. They did it till blood started gushing from under his nails. How they beat him with rubber clubs and rifle butts. He spent two weeks confined to bed, with no strength to move and he still walks with difficulty.
"The monsters injured his kidneys with the beating. Rasul told me he had no intention of falling into the hands of these beasts again and would die rather than go through the hell one more time."
As Moscow and the pro-Moscow puppet "government" in Chechnya claim purported "victory" in the long-running war against Islam and Mujahideen fighters in the republic, the story of Masud's family illustrates the brutal tactics still being used.
Puppet officials will not comment on accusations of torture.
For the past two years, Russians and their puppets have waged war by targeting the relatives of the Mujahiden. In 2004, they seized several relatives of the former Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's State President Aslan Maskhadov. They were released only several months after Maskhadov's murder by Russian thugs. More recently, they abducted the wife, baby son and father of the current CRI President Dokka Umarov. The wife and son were released but the fate of Umarov's father is still unknown.
A Chechen political analyst said young people were continuing to join the Mujahideen in the mountains.
Masud agrees. "My son would have never gone to fight, but for the hopeless situation, into which the Kremlin has driven us all," he said. "Why do they take hostage relatives of those, who resist them? They should go and fight the right people, instead of those sitting at home and just wanting to live a normal life."
He said he now feared what his elder son would do, but he would not be able to stop him leaving for the mountains too.
"Two bloody wars have changed many things in our life," he concluded, the IWPR reported.
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