Like many in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, Petimat Albakavar lives in terror.
“Nobody sleeps properly. We can’t because we are listening to every sound, waiting for the police to knock at the door,” she said.
On 10 July, Petimat’s 26-year-old son, Batyr, was taken away at dawn by armed men claiming to be Ingush police. They appeared at the door and demanded to see the family’s passports but refused to show any identification themselves.
“As soon as they left I went to all the police stations, but I couldn’t find my son. I filed complaints with the police and government officials, but nobody knew anything,” said Petimat, her eyes weary with grief and fear. “Ten days later we found a report on the Internet that someone with my son’s name, whom they described as a rebel leader, had been killed in the forest. It was Batyr. His passport was with him.”
Human rights investigators say hundreds of civilians such as Batyr have been “disappeared,” tortured and murdered by Russian security services as they struggle to quell a rebellion that spans across Ingushetia and the neighboring republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. In June Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was critically injured by a car bomb in an apparent assassination attempt. As suicide bombers strike with alarming frequency, the security forces are unleashing a wave of terror, which critics say is only serving to fuel the rebellion.
Thousands of Russian troops have been sent into Ingushetia, a largely Islamic republic. Masked soldiers man the checkpoints at every major intersection and the population lives under the constant watch of the security forces and their informants.
The human rights organization Mashr estimates that the number of those abducted and then killed nearly doubled last year to 212. This year the figure has already reached 210. Since 2002, when Russian forces became active in Ingushetia, Mashr reports that 1,000 people have been found dead and 175 are still missing.
Rebel attacks on soldiers have also increased. Some 200 Russian and Ingush police and soldiers have been killed in seven years.
“Things are really dangerous now,” said Illias, a local sergeant at the main police station in Ingushetia’s largest town, Nazran.
“We’ve all lost friends. We risk our lives every day,” he said, “but we need to make a living.”
On Aug. 17, a suicide bomber killed 24 of Illias’s colleagues in a single attack.
Kremlin hawks argue that a necessary battle is taking place against extremists bent on establishing an Islamic caliphate across the Caucasus. But many analysts believe that, while a small vanguard of Islamists with links to international jihadi movements does exist, aggrieved relatives who have joined the rebellion to avenge the brutal tactics of the security forces are doing most of the fighting.
Magomed Mutsolgov works for Mashr. Stored in his computer are countless images of the mutilated bodies of the abducted. Many of his colleagues have been driven out of Ingushetia by threats. Some have been murdered.
The grisly computer gallery includes photographs of Petimat’s dead son. Batyr’s body is covered in lacerations, large blackened patches consistent with electrocution, and his right shoulder is almost entirely severed from his torso. Each week, Mutsolgov said, young men are taken by the security services.
“They can be taken on suspicion of being a rebel, knowing a rebel or just having been seen with a suspected rebel,” he said.
Men are also taken in for appearing too overtly Muslim, he said.
“The security services used to sell the bodies back, but the torture marks became difficult to explain, now they just destroy the bodies,” he said.
No one has been convicted for the killings. Human rights groups say the number of active security forces, comprising different Chechen, Ingush and Russian organizations, make appeals and investigations by family members almost impossible.
Mashr claims that the repression relies heavily on the Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and his notoriously brutal forces but is orchestrated by the Russian secret service, the FSB. The allegations of systematic torture and killing were put to the FSB as part of a special investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 TV company, which will broadcast a documentary on the conflict on Friday, but no response was given.
Osama Basairov works for Russia’s leading human rights organization, Memorial, which has monitored the escalation of violence in Ingushetia since 2000.
“In our investigations we question everybody we possibly can who is connected to the murdered or disappeared, and in just about all the cases we find they are innocent people in no way connected to the rebels,” he said.
“It is this killing of innocents that is driving more and more men into the woods to join the war,” he said.
Digging around anxiously in her cupboard, Petimat Albakavar produces her son’s license to work as an aircraft engineer.
“He had special security clearance. He had just been promoted to head of his department; he worked very hard. He had no time to be a rebel, he was always studying for his exams,” she said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to