Human rights activists in Chechnya reported kidnapping and beating two persons by members of the top brass

According to human rights activists, two young people were carried away from their houses by force and cruelly beaten up in Staropromislovsky district of Grozny. Law enforcement bodies of Chechnya do not confirm this information.

"Yesterday, September, 6, residents of the settlement of Stary reported unlawful actions of the personnel of republican law enforcement bodies. On September, 5, a group of members of the top brass arrived in the settlement in three cars without vehicle identification numbers. In one house they captured a young man by name Said and a young girl in another", leader of one on the human rights organizations of the republic who preferred to remain anonymous said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"The enforcement officers did not introduce themselves, beat up the boy's and the girl's parents and other relatives who tried to prevent the abduction and opened disorderly firing from self-firers right in the middle of the street in order to disperse the neighbours and other residents of the settlement who gathered on hearing the noise", our interlocutor says.

Later, according to the human rights activist, relatives of the kidnapped young people managed to find out that "the personnel of Staropromislovsky District Department of Interior Affairs of Grozny is at the back of the action".

"The guy and the girl were released several hours after the abduction. Both were beaten up and the young man had also undergone torture with electric current", the leader of the human rights center states.

"It emerged that the reason for abduction was that the young man wore a beard, visited the mosque every morning and also wore a knitted skullcap. The girl wore a hijab. It turned out that the enforcement officers suspected that both of them were secret adherents of Wahabiism and displayed excessive vigilance. They did not care a bit about the fact that being police officers they violated the law themselves in this way", the human rights activist says.

He added that talking to the parents who had come to take their children home the representatives of law enforcement bodies stated that they were fulfilling the order of their management to "eliminate any person having anything in common with radical Islamites and punish in the most severe way all those suspected of sympathy for Wahhabites".

"The policemen openly told the detainees' parents that they had an instruction how to distinguish Wahhabites from adherents of traditional Islam. The main signs are wearing beards, trimming one's moustaches, rolling up one's trouser legs and wearing fishnet skullcaps while most of the believers in Chechnya traditionally ware headgears from thick cloth. Any girl who wears hijab can be declared adherent of Wahabiism", the "Caucasian Knot's" interlocutor said. In the opinion of a member of a local non-governmental organization, enforcement officers' actions like this provoke retaliatory violence.

The republican law enforcement bodies turned out inaccessible for any comments on the incident. The officials declared that the authorities had received no written statements of kidnapping of any other unlawful actions of power-wielding structures for the last 24 hours and it was impossible to carry out any inspections without a documentary evidence.