ICRF in Dagestan: during six months, 72 out of 96 kidnapping reports were bride abductions

During the six months of this year, the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) in Dagestan registered 96 reports of kidnappings. Of these, 72 are complaints of parents of girls, abducted for marriage. The statistics of kidnappings in Dagestan, published by human rights defenders at the forum in Vladikavkaz, differs from the data available to law enforcement agents.

At the same time, on August 25, Svetlana Isaeva, the head of the organization "Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights", stated at the forum of human rights defenders of Northern Caucasus that, according to her information, for the first half of 2012, at least 50 persons were kidnapped in the republic.

Organization "Mothers of Dagestan" counts complaints of relatives of kidnapped persons and monitors open sources

Svetlana Isaeva has explained to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that those figures appeared as a the result of counting the complaints, filed by relatives of kidnapped persons to the organization "Mothers of Dagestan", and monitoring of open sources. "In 2012, we received more than ten complaints, and we track the information in the Internet. If you count all such complaints about kidnappings, you will get a number of more than 50 persons," she has clarified.

Svetlana Isaeva has emphasized that their organizations counts all the victims both civilian and law enforcement agents. "At the forum, I voiced some figures: in the first half of 2012, we registered 100 attempts on lives of law enforcement agents, one terror act, and six attempts on lives of persons, carrying out justice or preliminary investigation. As a result of those crimes, 287 persons suffered. Of these, 69 law enforcement agents and five civilians perished," the human rights defender has stressed.

According to her, in total, on January 1-June 30, 2012, 99 active members of illegal armed formations (IAFs) of religious and extremist nature were killed at detention.

In practice, there were no cases when the organization "Mothers of Dagestan" protected law enforcement agents, since they did not contacted it. "If a police officer appeals to us, we will defend his rights. We make no difference for profession of a person, we defend all citizens. However, we never defend militants. If we see that a person took up arms, we step down. Such a person no longer needs our help. However, until a person does not cross the line, we try to help and protect him or her. And police officers usually seek protection of their rights in their trade union," the human rights activist says.

ICRF and MIA deny that law enforcers keep records on militants' children

The Investigatory Department of the ICRF in the Republic of Dagestan conducts its own statistics on reports on kidnappings and disappearances.

During six months of 2012, according to the Department of Procedural Control, they registered 96 reports on kidnappings. Of these, 72 were complaints of parents of girls, abducted for marriage. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Rasul Temirbekov, Senior Assistant of Chief of the Investigatory Department of the ICRF for Media Relations. During the same period, they received 144 reports of disappearances of people; 23 cases reported on kidnappings, committed by armed men in camouflage, and 72 persons were found.

The Dagestani Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) keeps statistics not of kidnapped persons, but of persons, put in the missing list. The MIA's website published a list of people, who disappeared during the period from 1999 to May 30, 2012. According to the list, during five months of this year, in Dagestan, nine persons were kidnapped or disappeared: Sirazhutdin Aliev, Gazimagomed Abdullaev, Magomed Magomedov (he has returned home, and he is hiding from the law enforcement agencies), Allakhverdi Radjabov, Zalbeg Paizulaev, Rashid Ismailov, Gadji Musafaev (all of them disappeared in Makhachkala), Timur Danilin (he disappeared in the Novolakskoe District) and Kamil Mutaev (disappeared in Kizilyurt). On some of those facts, criminal cases were instituted under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (murder).

Both the MIA and the Investigatory Department of Dagestan deny that law enforcement agents keep records of militants' children, which was stated at the forum by Maryam Akhmetova, an activist of the movement "Mothers of Kabardino-Balkaria for Protection of Citizens' Rights and Freedoms". "If we had such records, we would not be looking now for the Razdobudko children (according to investigators, on February 14, 2011, Vitaly Razdobudko and his wife Mariya Khorosheva committed a terror act in the village of Gubden in Dagestan. The ICRF investigates the circumstances of disappearance of their two minor children, note of the 'Caucasian Knot')," said a representative of the press service of the Republic's MIA.

Experts do not believe that such a record breaks the law, if the data are not disseminated and they do not become the basis for any actions against the registered persons. "I never heard of such a record; however, I believe that there is nothing terrible in it," lawyer Rasul Kadiev says.

According to the calculations of the "Caucasian Knot" based on own materials of the edition and information from other open sources, for the second quarter of 2012, at least 237 persons fell victim to the armed conflict in Dagestan. Of these, 102 persons were killed and 135 were wounded. The number includes eight civilians killed. Besides, 41 civilians were wounded.