Женщины и дети: право на жизнь

During two wars occurred on the territory of our republic, when tens thousands of my compatriots became victims of them, I experienced a lot. I heard many different stories about brutality of federal servicemen towards defenseless and peaceful population. Any of these stories could be the reason for opening a criminal case against them, but, unfortunately, and it is well-known fact, punishment of the servicemen committed crime against residents of Chechnya can happen only in exceptional cases. When these crimes can not be hided anymore. As, for example, the cases of Budanov and Uliman. But even in these cases the punishment of war criminals can be symbolic.

I shall not tell what I have heard from others. I would like to touch upon only two cases which had occurred to my relatives during this, so-called «counterterrorist operation».

I want to tell about a case that has occurred to my cousin who lived in the city of Grozny in the Fevralskaya-street, in his own house. If my memory does not fail me, the number of his house is 69. I cannot tell precisely, what month it was, but it has occurred after federal armies had entered Grozny. It was either the end of 1999 or January of 2000.

At this time representatives of the Russian armies were engaged in so-called “sweep operations”. And on one of these days one of these special divisions visited the house of my cousin Khumid which was partly destroyed during artillery bombardment. There were only my cousin and his wife Nura in the house (the children had been earlier sent to the relatives in the village, far away from Grozny which was continuously fired at and exposed to rocket impacts and aircraft bombardments). In the courtyard under a carport there was a new motor vehicle «Volga» belonging to him. The servicemen who arrived on two or three armored personnel carriers (APC) broke into the house and have demanded from Khumid documents for the car. He answered, that documents had been lost, and therefore he would not be able to show them. After that he together with his wife was ordered to go down to the cellar. As soon as they went down, the servicemen closed a cover of the cellar and put something heavy that they could not get out.

Khumid suspected, that the servicemen could give short shrift to them. Therefore he suggested his wife to prepare urgently a small hollow in the cellar. Having released a place in a corner of the cellar, they raked the ground with hands and laid down in this small hollow, covering it with various winter stocks found in the cellar. After a while a noise and a roar was heard above. The servicemen had searched their half-destroyed house, had taken away all valuables that they had managed to find, and then had rolled out the «Volga» car on a tow. When the marauders in the military form finished their dirty business, one of them opened the cover of the cellar and told: «Come out. You are free!». Khumid replied: «OK, we are coming out». But together with his wife he had even more closely nestled on the ground. In several seconds the marauder, believing that they, probably, were really coming out, threw a grenade into the cellar. The splinters of the exploded grenade wounded my sister-in-law into the hip. Meanwhile the servicemen had left.

When the noise of the leaving military vehicles abated, Khumid, having certain these marauders had really left, got out of the cellar and approached the neighbors for the help as his wife was bleeding profusely in the cellar.

Several families of other nationality lived in the neighboring houses. These people helped Nura to get out of the cellar, put her on a small sledge and took her to the military hospital which settled down at that time in territory which now the Ministry of Emergency Situation occupies.

There my sister-in-law was removed splinters and put bandaging. Then she spent some time in this hospital receiving treatment. The most interesting happened later. Some days after this incident Khumid and Nura were visited by a delegation. Several military people and one civilian came to them. He introduced himself as a correspondent of the American newspaper «Washington post» and suggested to give interview about what happened to them. But, probably, the war taught residents of the Chechen Republic a lot of things. Nura had flatly refused to provide any comments, declaring that she had nothing to complain and nothing terrible happened to her, and she had claims neither to the old, nor to the new authorities. This «journalist» tried to take photo of Nura, but she did not want to do it. So, no interview had followed. To tell the truth, when they were telling me this story, first I had been indignant at my sister-in-law’s refusal to tell about an arbitrariness of the Russian servicemen. But, having thought, I understood, that they were ordinary provokers. Perhaps, the refusal of Nura to tell about this case had saved them from inevitable destruction. I do not exclude, that the person, introduced as the American journalist was a provoker. If Nura or Khumid told, what happened to them, most likely, they would finish in the most severe way as militaries destroyed many of our compatriots who tried to pass over to the world the truth about what was happening here.

Later my brother approached the respective authorities with the request to find and to return him the car stolen by militaries. The car is still in search. It is still not found. It is one of scandalous cases of the servicemen of federal forces’ arbitrariness in our republic.

Other story that I want to tell occurred in 2000 on the night of September, 4 in Staropromyslovski district of Grozny, on Khankalskaya-street. My three cousins lived there; two of them have died long time ago.

At the beginning of the military actions young men left the city. Only my 86-year cousin Abbas Suleimanov and his wife Aishat remained in the house. They stayed because they wanted to keep their house and the property. Approximately at 11 PM on September 3, four Russian servicemen entered their courtyard and demanded drinks and snack. At that moment in the house there were the aged Abbas, his wife and their daughter-in-law, the wife of their son, Maret, with her three small children. They answered the soldiers, that they did not have vodka and asked them to leave and look for drinks somewhere else. What did these «fighters with terrorism» do?

The militaries separated all of them in different rooms and closed. Maret with the children was locked in one room, Aishat - in another, and Abbas - in the third. Then they began question everyone separately. They demanded to tell, where money and valuables were. Now it is difficult to judge what was the purpose of it. We can only guess about it.

Some time passed, and then Айшат heard that someone from these servicemen came into the kitchen and began rummaging in the crockery, searching for something. It was after the midnight. The aged Аббас, fettered, was sitting on the bed in the next room. Suddenly she heard a scream “Allah”! They were killing the owner of the house, my cousin Abbas, with a kitchen knife. Then they came to Aishat. She was ill (the disabled of the 1-st group). The servicemen started mocking at her.

One of them pulled the firing cock of the automatic machine, and shot her in the belly. (Then, as it was found out in the hospital, where Aishat was operated, the bullet was with the displaced center. It had affected the internal organs of this unfortunate woman in several places, but the doctors managed to save her life). Aihsat pretended that she died. Otherwise they would smash her.

In this turmoil (it had started to dawn already) their daughter-in-law Maret managed to take hold of the automatic machine thrown by one of the soldiers. She closed the room, where she was, from the inside that the servicemen could not burst into the room, and then declared: “I have got your automatic machine. If you come nearer to the door, I will shoot”. The soldiers, the marauders, understood, that the automatic machine had disappeared. They began asking her, begging to return the automatic machine, promising, that they would leave at once. But she refused to talk to them until the dawn.

As soon as it got light, she threw the automatic machine out of the window and soldiers, taking it away, had disappeared. When one of the relatives came to them, they found killed Abbas and heavily wounded Aishat and gave the alarm. The murderer of my brother was found. He was from Ryazan region. His name was either Sergey or Oleg. They say that court hearing took place. He was given either two or three years of imprisonment but conditional.

That is the way the representatives of federal armies committed unpunished murder in September of 2000 in Grozny. Certainly, it is not the only case. You can find a lot of facts like this in our republic. Now everyone speaks about Ulman and the brutal murder of six our peaceful citizens among which there was a pregnant woman, the mother of several minor children. The Ulman’s group had killed these defenseless people. The whole world knows about it and keeps silence. And now there are a lot of such ulmans in Russia.

Today I have heard on the TV, that the president of the Russian Federation Putin delivered to the State Duma the bill which envisages amnesty not only for participants of Chechen “illegal groups”, but also for servicemen of federal armies who had committed either this or that crime.

You know, it does not revolt me; it does not even surprise me. I understand it. Such a great power as the Russian Federation should have such a clever president who first sends the soldiers to kill, and then declares amnesty for crimes committed by these people during the war.

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