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Russian officials probe rights abuses in Chechnya
December 17, 2001
By Clara Ferreira-Marques
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian officials in separatist Chechnya said Monday they had opened an investigation into reports that troops had engaged in looting and "tactless behavior" during a five-day operation to track down guerrillas.
The probe, a rare acknowledgment of wrongdoing in Russia's 2-year-old military drive against the separatists, concerned the latest of its "sweep operations" in the town of Argun.
"During an initial inquiry, we have established instances of looting and tactless behavior by Russian servicemen," Argun prosecutor Rostislav Timshin told Interfax news agency.
Argun, a few miles east of Chechnya's largely flattened regional capital Grozny, has been the theater of frequent clashes between Chechen fighters and Russian troops.
Sergei Babkin, local head of the FSB domestic intelligence service, said some alleged wrongdoers had been identified.
"If the facts are confirmed, the culprits will be punished," Babkin told Itar-Tass news agency but added that residents' complaints often proved to be exaggerated.
Kommersant daily quoted Babkin as saying 20 people had been killed and 60 detained during the house-to-house searches, which the newspaper said were aimed at rooting out Khattab, a top rebel commander of Arab origin.
There were no reports of Russian casualties.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who masterminded the second post-Soviet military drive into Chechnya in 1999, three years after the region was granted de facto independence, told the Financial Times newspaper 20 Russian servicemen had been charged with rights violations.
"The judiciary is operating in Chechnya," Putin said in an interview published Monday. "Our law enforcement agencies are fighting not only terrorists and separatists but also the military who commit crimes."
He added the military operation had been scaled down.
"What is happening there is the rehabilitation of peaceful life," he said.
WEST MUTES CRITICISM
Human rights groups repeatedly accuse Russian forces of excesses in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim region in southern Russia. Residents say troops remove young men from homes of suspected rebel sympathizers during "sweep operations" and beat them.
Officials deny systematic rights violations, vow to punish culprits and accuse rebels of being funded by a "terrorist international," including Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden, accused by Washington of being behind the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the United States.
Moscow says its troops have established control over Chechnya despite rebel raids. Russian media report that life is returning to normal under a pro-Moscow regional administration.
Western criticism of the Russian military operation, already muted in the past year, has died away since Russia offered its full support to the U.S. operation against Afghanistan, with a number of governments saying Moscow is also fighting terrorism.
In Moscow, Putin met Muslim clergy to mark the feast of Eid al-Fitr closing the fasting month of Ramadan.
"Your duty before Muslims has not been easy, given economic difficulties, and so it is even more valued," Putin said. He posthumously bestowed a top military honor on a teen-ager from Chechnya who died trying to fend off gunmen who also killed his policeman father.
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