Chechen interior ministry: no order to destroy rebels and their relatives exists

The number of punitive actions conducted by the Russian military and local law-enforcers against relatives of the Chechen rebels has considerably increased lately.

On April 19, law-enforcers arrived in the village of Ishkhoy-Yurt in a Zhiguli car without number plates. There they savagely beat and then took away in an unknown direction Imsolt Vadalov (b. 1937). The aged man has been a teacher for all his life.

On April 16, officers of Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov's security service rushed into the house of Temiramiyev in the village of Sogunty, Chechnya's Nozhay-Yurt district. They beat the master's daughter-in-law demanding that she tell them the whereabouts of her husband. Then they drove the family out into the street and set the house on fire. The cause of such punitive actions in both the cases was that sons' of Vadalov and Temiramiyev were rebels. Relatives of the Vadalov and Temiramiyev families assert that Kadyrov's people said in both the cases they had a certain order from Moscow "to destroy all terrorists and their accomplices at the scene."

The Chechen interior ministry claims that no written orders concerning extrajudicial punishment of terrorists exist. Officers of Kadyrov's security service tell the same thing. "No one will ever give such an order. We act in strict compliance with the Constitution and laws of the Russian Federation," a high-ranking official of Kadyrov's guard said.

However, residents of Chechnya think that the republican law-enforcement agencies have obviously received a private order "from the superiors" to dispose of members of the armed resistance, their relatives, and acquaintances by all means. "So called killing squadrons, which obey no one and nothing and openly destroy people, would have not been able to commit outrages in our republic without the approval from the Russian higher political leadership and Chechen authorities," said Abdurashid Islamov, a 55-year-old resident of Grozny whose 19-year-old son was abducted and killed by law-enforces two years ago.

Editors note: See also the article "Security service officers in Chechnya receive order to destroy all terrorist suspects".