Mass graves in Chechnya

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Main article: Second Chechen War crimes and terrorism

Dozens of mass graves containing at least hundreds of corpses have been uncovered since the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999 . As of May 2007, there are reported to be 52 registered sites of mass graves in Chechnya. According to Amnesty International, thousands of people are believed to be buried in unmarked graves with up to 5,000 civilians remain missing.^[1]

1 Overview
2 Selected discoveries
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Overview

In March 2001 Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented eight unmarked graves, all of which were discovered in 2000 and 2001. It has also documented eight cases, when dead bodies were simply dumped by roadsides, on hospital grounds or elsewhere. The Memorial Human Rights Center also has documented numerous cases. The majority of the bodies showed close range bullet wounds, typical of summary executions, and signs of severe mutilation. Examinations of some of these bodies by doctors have revealed that some of the mutilations were inflicted while the detainees were still alive.^[2]

On March 29, 2001, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), Mary Robinson, called for a thorough investigation of the mass graves site. In a statement given to the 57th session of the UNHCR, Robinson stated "cases such as the mass grave in Zdorovie, discovered earlier this year, must be followed up and thoroughly investigated." Three weeks earlier, the authorities had buried the rest of the bodies without prior notice and without performing adequate autopsies or collecting crucial evidence which could have helped in identifying the perpetrators.^[3]

In 2003, residents and human rights campaigners alleged that fragments of blown-up bodies were being found all over the war-ruined region. The critics alleged that rather than put a stop to the human rights violations, the military appeared to be doing its best to hide them.^[4]

On March 31, 2003, the Russian government's human rights commissioner Oleg Mironov called on the authorities to open the mass burial sites in Chechnya to identify the bodies and establish the reasons for their deaths. "It is necessary to open a number of graves in Chechnya and see why the people died, carry out necessary expert examinations, and then bury them as humans deserve," Mironov told a news conference in Moscow. At the same time, Mironov rejected the proposal by Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to establish an international tribunal to investigate alleged war crimes committed in Chechnya.^[5]

On June 16, 2005, the local pro-Russian government announced that there were 52 mass graves in Chechnya. The chairman of the Chechen government committee for civil rights, Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying that the graves have not been opened, so the total number of dead was difficult to determine.^[6]

By 2005, up to 5,000 people who had disappeared since 1999, out of the population of roughly one million, were still missing.^[7] Families are reported to paying ransom to Russian troops for bodies.^[8]

[edit] Selected discoveries

March 3, 2000: German N24 television company aired a video tape showing a mass grave of people said to be Chechens, many of whom were bound and tied at the ankles. The footage also showed a dead Chechen dragged by a lorry across a field, Russian soldiers dumping a dead body from a tank and a bed-ridden Chechen man telling of being tortured and beaten. "I was shocked by what I saw," commented Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner. Moscow argued that it showed the burial of rebels killed in fighting rather than having been executed.^[9]^[10]

April 30, 2000 - Eight decapitated bodies were found in a fresh burial place near the village of Dargo, Vedensky District in southern Chechnya. They were identified as three OMON and three regular police officers, and one military conscript; all of them had been reported as missing in action for weeks.^{[citation needed]}

July 27, 2000 - The bodies of about 150 people were reported to have been found in a mass grave near the village of Tangi-Chu, Urus-Martanovsky District in southern Chechnya. People who happened to witness the exhumations claimed that the hands of the dead bodies had been tied with barbed wire. A pro-Moscow official stated that around half the bodies were of Chechen rebels as they had Chechen rebel uniforms on them. The rest were of civilians who "appeared to have no marks of violence on them".^[11]

February 21, 2001 - More than 50 (an official in pro-Moscow administration put the number at 80^[12]) bodies of men and women, showing signs of torture and military-style summary execution, were uncovered across the main Russian Khankala military base at Zdorovye, near Grozny.^[13] Many were booby-trappped^[14] and some bore signs of mutilation including stab wounds, broken limbs, severed fingertips and dismembered ears, and many had their hands tied behind them and were blindfolded.^[15] Of victims whose corpses were identified, the vast majority were last seen when Russian federal forces took them into their custody, including women and children. Human rights groups suggested that Russian servicemen at the Khankala base used the Dachny (also called Zdorovye) dacha settlement as a disposal site for executed prisoners.^[16] The HRW called the official investigation "a charade".^[17] Among the identified victims was the corpse of Nura Luluyeva, a Chechen woman who was later proven in the Hague court to have been kidnapped and beaten to death by the Russian servicemen in 2000.^[18]

April 10, 2001 - Pro-Moscow Grozny Mayor Bislan Gantamirov announced that 17 bodies with gunshot wounds had been discovered in the basement of a bombed-out dormitory next to Oktyabrskoye city district police station, manned by the OMON troops from Siberia's Khanty-Mansiysk. An initial examination of the corpses showed that the majority of those killed were middle-aged men and that the bodies were approximately six months old. The place was then cordoned off by the military and the basement destroyed in a claimed cover-up.^{[citation needed]} The OMON officer in charge of the station claimed the unit had nothing to do with the disappearance of local residents, adding that mass graves in Chechnya are commonplace.^[19] In 2005, one of the unit's officers, Sergei Lapin, was convicted for the torture of a Chechen man who remains missing.^[20] In June 2006, Russia's human rights groups produced a documentary evidence of a secret torture and murder cell in the basement of a former school for deaf children in Oktyabrsokye district of Grozny. According to Memorial, Russian police used the dungeon to torture and murder hundreds of people. It said it collected the evidence just in time before building housing the cellar has since been demolished in another crude attempt at a cover-up.^[21]

April 23, 2001 - A Russian reconnaissance unit has found the remains of at least 18 up to 30 people in a mass grave near a rough mountain road in southern Chechnya. According to a spokesman for the Kremlin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the victims appeared to have been prisoners of war killed during the First Chechen War.^[22] All appeared to have been shot in the head and then beheaded, he said.^[23]

April 9, 2002 - A mass grave containing remains of about 100 people was found in a mountain cave in Achkhoy-Martanovsky District. Local people who discovered the grave, claimed on the basis of the examination of the skeletal remains that they were of children, all of them reportedly beheaded. Lieutenant-General Vladimir Moltenskoi, who commanded combined federal forces in Chechnya, promptly announced the bodies might be of Russian soldiers captured by Chechen fighters in 1994-96 and held in an alleged death camp. However, eyewitnesses say stewed-pork tins and bottles of vodka found on the spot prove roistering Russian soldiers stayed there. Local people also allege that, as early as in December 2000, several detainees, including children held during "mopping-up" operations, were held by the troops stationed in the area of the caves.^[24]

September 8, 2002 - Police from Ingushetia discovered a common grave near Goragorsk, on the border with neighboring Chechnya, containing the bodies of 15 ethnic Chechen men.^[25] The seven who were identified were last seen being taken into custody by the Russian troops at different times and in different places in May of 2002.^[26] The grave was reportedly found after relatives of the victims bribed Russian soldiers for information.^[27]

January 13, 2003 - Ten dismembered corpses were discovered near Grozny. The three identified bodies (only fragments remained of the other bodies) belonged to inhabitants who had been taken into custody by federal forces in late 2002.^{[citation needed]}

March, 2003 - Chechen rebels said they found a mass grave containing more than 20 bodies of civilians in a grain silo in the town of Argun, of whom they recovered three. Human rights groups said many civilians went missing there during the sweep operation three months earlier.^[28]

April 6, 2003 - Police in Chechnya said they had discovered four graves filled with disfigured bodies over the past 24 hours. Chechnya's Emergency Situations Ministry claimed that three sites were found in the northern Nadterechny District, a relatively peaceful area of Chechnya. According to the ministry, the heads and arms had been cut off of the corpses.^{[citation needed]}

October 9, 2004 - Russia's NTV television station claimed that a mass grave containing six unidentified bodies was discovered in the capital Grozny, during excavation work at a building site. The report said that the victims had apparently been shot and buried about three months ago.^[29]

November 20, 2004 - A mass grave containing the bodies of eleven unidentified young people, aged 12 to 20, was discovered near the Gudermessky District village of Dzhalka.^{[citation needed]}

April 2, 2006 - The remains of 57 bodies were discovered in unmarked graves in the Sergey Kirov Park in Grozny.^[30] Valery Kuznetsov, Chechnya's prosecutor, claimed that an examination of the corpses buried in the unmarked graves indicated that they were "ordinary citizens" who had died from explosions of artillery shells and bombs during siege between 1999 and 2000. He further added that there would be no investigations on the finding. Local authorities plan to build a large entertainment centre, to be called Akhmad Kadyrov, on the site of the former Kirov Park, where nine graves were uncovered in April-May 2000.^[31] The graves were discovered during de-mining work in the park.

June 27, 2006 - A spokesman for the FSB branch for Chechnya told the Russian military agency Interfax that a grave containing the bodies of nine federal soldiers and local supporters executed by Chechen rebels in 1996-1997 was discovered in the republic. According to him, the grave was found on the premises of a destroyed militant base.