Russia
Denies Chechnya Atrocities
- Television Footage Shows Burials
- Moscow Blocks Red Cross, UN From Investigating
- Moscow Suggests Fakery; Rights Groups Protest
MOSCOW
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Television
footage showed one body that had been dragged behind a
truck.
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(CBS) The Russian government has forbidden the Red Cross
and the United Nations from investigating allegations that
Russian troops have carried out torture and summary executions
in Chechnya, CBS News Correspondent David Hawkins
reports.
The Russian announcement comes after Russian and Western
television stations showed footage of soldiers piling bodies
into a mass grave, feeding new allegations of atrocities by
Russian troops in Chechnya.
On Friday, Moscow said it was too early to draw conclusions from
the tape.
The footage was shot by a correspondent for Germany's N24
television. It depicts soldiers piling dozens of corpses of
Chechen men into a rectangular pit and covering them with clumps
of earth.
Many of the corpses were in military uniform, suggesting they
were Chechen rebel fighters. But some appeared to have been
bound, suggesting they did not die in combat. Others were
mutilated - their right ears cut off, possibly signs of torture
and execution. In one sequence, a body was dragged behind a
truck.
"This is serious material. Above all, all sides must
look into the circumstances of the death of the Chechens,"
Interfax news agency quoted Russia's chief Chechnya spokesman,
Sergei Yastrzhembsky, as saying.
The statement added, "It is too early to draw a full
conclusion."
Alexander Zdanovich, spokesman for Russia's FSB domestic
security service, the main successor to the KGB secret police,
told NTV television the tape was a "falsification"
and that the dead Chechens must have been fighters killed in
battle.
A human rights group demanded an inquiry into the incident
depicted in the film, while Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was
likely to face questioning over it during talks with the Council
of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles.
Russia has continually denied its troops carry out systematic
abuses, saying such allegations are propaganda by the separatist
rebels it has fought for five months in the province.
But since the fall of Grozny last month, Russian troops have
been rounding up ethnic Chechen men of fighting age, as well as
some women, and packing them off to camps for interrogation.
One Chechen, 21-year-old Moussa, told CBS News that at
the Chernokosovo camp Russian soldiers beat him with rubber
truncheons and hammers. His spine is broken. He said another
prisoner suffered a worse fate.
"Five or six soldiers took my neighbor out of the cell
and violated him again and again," said Moussa through
a translator. "After three days of this he told them he
was a rebel to make them stop. They took him away and shot
him."
New York-based Human Rights Watch has led the atrocity
allegations, saying it has collected testimony from Chechens who
were tortured in a detention camp in northern Chechnya, and from
others who witnessed summary executions in the capital Grozny.
Over the past several weeks Human Rights Watch has documented
more than 100 atrocities it claims were committed by Russian
soldiers.
It said the latest film was further proof of abuses.
"The film looks extremely authentic, it looks very
detailed and raises a lot of very, very serious questions about
the treatment of Chechen prisoners of war," said
Malcolm Hawkes, a Human Rights Watch researcher. "If it
transpires that those men were indeed executed in custody then
that is a war crime."
He said an autopsy of the bodies should be conducted to
determine how they died and that these and other allegations of
abuses needed to be thoroughly investigated.
If Russia could not do this, then an international body needed
to look into the allegations, Hawkes said.
Meanwhile, Russia kept up its offensive in the mountainous
southern regions of Chechnya, which has been Moscow's focus
since it captured Grozny.
Interfax news agency quoted the military as saying that the main
battles were taking place around the village of Shatoi, where it
said most of the rebel commanders, including Chechen President
Aslan Maskhadov, were based.
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