"Memorial": young Moslems are secretly kidnapped in Dagestan

This is what Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, an employee of the representative office of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" in Ingushetia and the author of the report to be issued today, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent on the problem of kidnappings in Dagestan:

"Young men disappear, who go to the mosque, pray, and their wives carry Muslim clothes. Most likely, they are adherents of non-traditional Islam."

According to her story, unlike Chechnya and Ingushetia, where people are almost always obviously kidnapped by fighters of power agencies - armed people in masks arrive in military vehicles and in the eyes of witnesses catch and take people away with great noise, in Dagestan, the situation is quite different:

"...Most often, people disappear unnoticed: a person leaves home and never comes back.

...The problem is that the armed underground in Dagestan operates quietly and point-wise. Most often, the victims of attacks and acts of terror are the employees of local power agencies who work in the subdivisions, where people are illegally kept and tortured."

Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya thinks that a possible reason for kidnapping young Moslems is the fear of revenge to be undertaken by the participants of the underground: therefore, they are kidnapped without noise, unlike the incidents in the neighbouring Republics:

"Most likely, employees of power agencies fear for their life and, consequently, people are often taken away for tortures, for example, to Chechnya. ...They certainly torture people in Dagestan too, but it's easier to do it in Chechnya, lawyers have no access to detainees there, and tortures are used with absolute impunity.

...We don't have any direct evidences that the missing people are in hands of state structures. I only have relatives' evidences and interviews with advocates, which indicate that people had been kidnapped. We also know nothing about their involved in the armed underground."