Memorial: Chechen deputy prosecutor's assertions are contrary to fact

On October 28, ITAR-TASS Agency expounded a statement of Alexander Nikitin, Deputy Prosecutor of the Chechen Republic, who, according to the agency, "refuted the information of some human rights organizations" about the number of people who disappeared in the Chechen Republic during the second Chechen war. Meanwhile only one human rights organization, Memorial, was mentioned in the agency?s report.

This fact obliges us to comment on the words of the Deputy Prosecutor of Chechnya.

He states two thousand names have been registered in the lists of people missing since 1994.

We do not dispute the fact that many people were kidnapped and disappeared in Chechnya in the period before 1999. However, we assert that only single instances registered in the official lists of the missing which were presented to the Memorial staff correlate to the events that had happened before the second Chechen war began in October 1999.

It is not clear what lists the Deputy Prosecutor speaks about. In January 2003, the Chechen Public Prosecutor?s Office declared that 1,663 people had disappeared in Chechnya. Probably, this very list has been extended to two thousand people up to now. Although at that moment the Chechen Government staff had lists of more than 2800 missing people. The vast majority of listed cases shows that federal forces officers are connected with detentions and abductions of the missing.

In October 2003, Movsar Khamidov, Chechen administration official responsible for contacts with security agencies, said about 300 people had disappeared in Chechnya since the beginning of this year.

Thus, even considering quite official data of the Chechen Republic's competent bodies, one can make a conclusion that over three thousand people have disappeared in Chechnya. However, the Deputy Prosecutor "disproves" the data of human rights activists for some reason.

In the next place, the Deputy Prosecutor states, "We have recently received a declaration from the Memorial human rights organization containing the list of people they consider missing; but there was an examination and relatives of the people in the list showed it was untrue."

This statement contradicts the real facts. Memorial submitted such a list to the bodies of the Chechen Public Prosecutor?s Office in March 2002 for the last time. The Public Prosecutor?s Office has never informed Memorial that it refuted any of the names and facts in the list.

And it is not accidental that the Deputy Prosecutor could find no other example but the case of Dik Altemirov to prove his statement that Memorial's data were unreliable.

By the by, Mr. Nikitin forgot for some reason to mention that this case happened in May 2001. He also did not say that the famous Chechen public figure Dik Altemirov was taken by servicemen from his house to an illegal place of custody on the territory of a military unit. For that very reason Memorial immediately sent inquiries to various official bodies. We did not enroll Dik Altemirov in the lists of the missing. A number of international human rights organizations that were worried about Dik Altemirov?s destiny also sent their inquiries to Russia.

Fortunately, Dik Altemirov was soon released that is why many inquiries were received after that. Had the Deputy Prosecutor of Chechnya expounded the facts correctly, he would have hardly used this example as an illustration for his doubtful statements.

Presently, Memorial has sent a letter to the Chechen Public Prosecutor?s Office in which it demands clear information about all the cases when Memorial's data on the people missing in Chechnya was not corroborated.