09 January 2006, 17:47
Prisoner disappears from jail
Mr Rasul Kudayev, charged with taking part in the rebel attack on Nalchik, disappeared from the temporary detention isolator in the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria as far back as late December last year. This is what Mr Kudayev's mother Fatima Tekayeva told Caucasian Knot's correspondent. She learnt that her son had been moved somewhere as she was trying to pass him some medicines. An isolator worker told her that Rasul was no longer there. Mr Tekayeva was not able to get the isolator chief or the chief of the medical unit to tell her where her son was. Isolator workers told her that she was to apply to Mr Aleksei Sovrulin, chief of the investigation group of the Russian prosecutor's office, for information, as he had ordered to bring Rasul away. However, Ms Tekayeva has not been able to meet Mr Sovrulin or talk to him by phone to date.
Fatima also said that Rasul had been removed after his meeting with Dmitry Kozak, the Russian president's envoy to the South federal district, and Arsen Kanokov, president of Kabardino-Balkaria, whom he had told about torture being used against him.
Lawyer Alexandra Zakharova who represents Mr Rasul Kudayev in the international suit of former Guantanamo prisoners against the US government asked the president of Kabardino-Balkaria where Mr Kudayev was at the moment. The answer was that Rasul still was in the Nalchik isolator, which is not true.
