Mukhu Aliev: situation with kidnappings in Dagestan grows better

President of Dagestan Mukhu Aliev asserts that the situation with kidnappings in his Republic becomes better now. According to his data, during the last decade, 80 persons were kidnapped in Dagestan, of them 47 persons were returned, 4 bodies were found and whereabouts of the remaining 29 is unknown.

The leader of the Republic announced these figures on March 10 during his meeting with the members of the Commission of Russian Public Chamber for Interethnic Relations and Freedom of Conscience, headed by its Chairman Nikolai Svanidze, and a group of well-known Russian human rights defenders.

Touching on human rights in Dagestan, Mukhu Aliev has noted that "we read and hear undeserved reproaches in certain media and from NGOs that Dagestan admits mass violations of human rights and that the situation here is worse from year to year."

"I want to state at once that a kidnapping or a murder is an emergency. From the very start of my presidency in Dagestan, I draw attention to this problem and broke the plot of silence that had surrounded this topic. We're discussion the issue with NGO and other associations on a regular basis. And we've established some order, starting with accounting. It may sound not quite nice, but still, we had no aggregate statistics. But today, every Dagestanian knows the situation: 29 persons are still missing; a special inquiry group created after these events under the Prosecutor's Office is dealing with them. I hope that the group will make everything possible to open these crimes," said the President.

Mukhu Aliev has stated that until now there is no proved case on participation of law enforcers to kidnappings. "I want to reaffirm that every kidnapping case committed by people in camouflage will be considered with my personal participation; and we'll try to eradicate this shameful phenomenon of kidnapping completely in Dagestan," he said.