Relatives of missing Chechen residents demand to punish kidnappers

On August 31, relatives of persons disappeared and kidnapped in Chechnya appealed to the Russian President and the leader of Chechnya with a request to develop a mechanism to search for disappeared residents and to punish guilty persons.

According to the text of the appeal signed by 300 persons, the relatives are confident that to reveal the whereabouts of kidnapped and disappeared persons, an additional mechanism is needed, and the process of its development and creation should involve the supreme bodies of state power of the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic.

The authors of the letter believe that there are the obvious evidences pointing to the fact that many kidnappings "have been committed by law enforcers and soldiers of the Russian army."

According to the story of Tamara Kadyrova, Chairperson of the Committee of the Disappeared Persons in Chechnya, on August 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) held a meeting with relatives of the disappeared persons.

According to the version of Tamara Kadyrova, there is no exact statistics on the number of kidnapped and disappeared persons, and "all the information is to be collected little by little." "At present, more than 4000 forms with information about disappeared residents of Chechnya have been collected. However, this figure is far from a final one," the activist of the organization has said.