Nick Paton Walsh in Grozny
The president of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov,
elected with a suspiciously large majority last October amid claims of
widespread fraud, takes a personal interest in security. Arbi,
27, a petrol station attendant, knows this well. He was battered and kicked in
the groin by Ramzan, the president's son and security
chief.
After three days of being beaten
in the basement of a house in the village
of Hosi Yurt, the son entered the cell
Arbi shared with three others.
"I had never seen Ramzan's face before,
apart from on television", Arbi - whose details have
been changed - told the Guardian.
The prisoners stood in a line as Ramzan asked: "Do you know who
I am?"
Arbi answered respectfully that he did, but was
then beaten. "Ramzan hit me
in the head and kicked me
in the groin. They beat me
and broke my nose," he said.
Arbi never saw Ramzan Kadyrov
again, and was eventually released when his family paid a ransom
of three AK-47 rifles through a contact in the police.
Arbi and the other three
captives, whose fate remains unknown,
were among the first victims
of a new wave of Chechen-on-Chechen violence sweeping the republic.
For nearly a decade, a cycle of violence has led Russian troops and Chechens to
routinely brutalise each other. Yet since the election of President Kadyrov the former head
of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration, Chechens seem to have
taken over what was previously
Russian work: the "clean-up operations" where suspected rebel sympathisers are abducted and
then interrogated, tortured or even
murdered in a bid to "stabilise" Chechnya.
A former
rebel and religious leader, Mr Kadyrov is reviled
by Chechens as a traitor. But the Kremlin feels safer with
the prospect of continuing violence between pro-Russian
and separatist Chechens. His iron grip may even allow
Moscow to lessen its troop
presence in the territory.
His private
army of 4,000 led by his police captain
son is, together with the local police,
now at the helm of what locals
call the "Chechenisation of the conflict", in which family is pitted against family and villager against
villager.
The republic
is entering the worst stage of its conflict, a tide of internecine violence permitted if not endorsed by Moscow and
written off by the Kremlin as a matter of Chechnya's internal security.
The policy is
turning moderates like Arbi against
the pro-Moscow
administration. He was picked up
from work about eight weeks
ago by a Chechen special police unit. They
asked for him by name, took
his passport and led him to
a car waiting outside.
"They
said they had information that I was a rebel, that
I was fighting against President Kadyrov," he said. The men said
they worked for Mr Kadyrov
and drove him away to
a deserted building near the settlement
of Gil Gen. There he was beaten
with a metal bar. "They
asked if I was going to
talk," he continued.
"They said one name to me
that I recognised. I said that I had fought in the first
war [for independence in the 1990s], but now I was staying
at home."
The six men then took the
magazines out of their automatic rifles and beat
him with the Kalashnikovs for 10 to 15 minutes
on his kidneys.
"That
hurt the most," he said, a dew
forming around his eyes. "They said I would have
to name people or they would
make me an invalid. Later I went to the
hospital and they told me
my kidneys had been damaged."
Arbi refused to name anyone and on the third
day, he was
dragged out to a waiting car. "I was terrified that
they were going to hand
me to the
Russians," he said. "But they said they were
taking me to [the village
of] Hosi Yurt. I had heard bad things about
that place."
Hosi Yurt, near
Mr Kadyrov's stronghold of Tsentaroi, has become infamous among many Chechens
as a detention centre where Kadyrov loyalists
herd fellow Chechens they see
as a threat, interrogating them about rebel
links, alleged crimes, or often
just holding them for ransom.
"I have
heard of people being battered with metal bars in the gym there
over periods of 40 days," Arbi said. "They also smash the
ends of your fingers."
"If
I had the chance I would kill Ramzan
myself," he added, before admitting:
"I would at least beat him like
he beat me.
I cannot call him a normal Chechen."
He added:
"It was not always this way.
[Chechens] got into fights, but now the violence
is like never before. Who is to blame? Kadyrov."
A spokesman
for the Kadyrov
administration, Abdulbek Vakhayev, said Ramzan had never taken part in beatings
or torture. "There are many
people in Chechnya who look like
Ramzan," he said, suggesting that Arbi may
have made a mistake.
"This
sounds like black PR. There are crimes in Chechnya,
like there are elsewhere in the world. Victims
of violence in Chechnya have the right
to go to
the prosecutor's office."
The brutality
of the Kadyrov regime has not lessened the resistance to the Russian
presence in Chechnya.
A recent
survey by the Institute for
Strategic Studies found that from
August 2002 to 2003,
federal forces suffered up to 1,200 deaths,
the highest since 1999.
For Arbi, Mr Kadyrov's rule
is just another part of an occupation that must be resisted.
The first glint of hope returns
to his desolate, reddened eyes when
he says: "I believe one day
that Chechnya will be a free country. Nobody will lie down
until then."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4834723-103681,00.html