Aushev brothers kidnapped in Chechnya were kept in Urus-Martan

Magomed Maksharipovich Aushev, 22, and Magomed Osmanovich Aushev, 25, who were kidnapped by a group of unidentified power agents on September 18, were first kept in the Urus-Martan District and then transferred to the mountain Shatoy District of Chechnya.

This is the opinion of Aslambek Apaev, expert of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG) for Northern Caucasus and chairman of the Committee for Defence of Rights of Forced Migrants.

"The brothers were captured in Chechnya after a telephone call from the FSB Department for North Ossetia. I'm strongly convinced that nobody was going to leave the guys alive. The agents had planned to kill them. Their passports were taken away and burnt; they also took away their waist belts and mobile phones. The kidnappers, obviously employees of power agencies, brought the Aushev brothers to Urus-Martan, where they were beaten and tortured, and then removed them to Shatoy. There, they were released."

In the opinion of the human rights activist, it was the mass protest action organized in Nazran by their relatives and fellow villagers that saved the guys from inevitable death: "Most likely, the authorities just got frightened that the protest action could acquire the all-national character and lead to unpredictable results. The Aushevs were released only after a call to the mobile phone of one of their torturers, when the brothers were already brought to the place of forthcoming execution."