KavkazCenter - Human Rights Watch learned that invaders and their puppets burn houses of relatives of Mujahideen

Human Rights Watch learned that invaders and their puppets burn houses of relatives of Mujahideen

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch called Moscow to stop the practice of house-burnings belonging to families of Mujahideen in Chechnya, and "to call to account the perpetrators", BBC reports.

In a report published on Thursday noted that in 2008, Chechen puppet officials, including ringleader of apostates Ramzan Kadyrov, made public statements that the families of Mujahideen should expect to be punished unless they convinced their sons to surrender to invaders.

According to the report, the punitive groups generally perpetrated at night, often masked, arriving in several cars, holding them at gunpoint forcing the residents out of their house. After that the house is set on fire preventing owners or their neighbors from approaching it in order to extinguish.

According to HRW, 26 houses, where the relatives of Mujahideen lived, were burned between June 2008 and June 2009.

The report describes 13 cases, the most recent of which took place on June 18.

The Memorial Human Rights Centre, reported that at about 5 a.m., puppet law enforcement servicemen burned two homes belonging to the elderly parents of a Mujahid in the village of Engel-Yurt, Gudermes district.

The victims were generally told in clear terms that complaining about the house-burning would lead to further repercussions.

Human rights defenders said they interviewed 37 Chechens, including former owners and residents of destroyed homes, to compile the report. The victims told defenders in most cases that the men openly identified themselves as members of the puppet regime.

In more than 100 judgments to date, the European Court of Human Rights has found Russia responsible for serious human rights violations in Chechnya.

Human rights defenders point out that the house-burnings is a typical tactic of the authorities, not only in Chechnya but also throughout the region.

Meanwhile, another international rights group, Amnesty International, said in a report released Wednesday that up to 60 mass graves have been found in Chechnya since the beginning of the first war in 1994.

Department of Monitoring, Kavkaz Center