MOSCOW, Dec 8: The pro-Moscow president of breakaway Chechnya on Tuesday made a landmark admission that Russian forces were to blame for a number of civilian disappearances in the war-torn republic.
"Law and order officials, having arrested a suspect, do not always inform the local authorities and the families of the detained, which is a breach of the law," President Alu Alkhanov was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians have disappeared in Chechnya since hostilities resumed in 1999 between Russian federal forces and guerillas, according to estimates by non-governmental organizations.
Rights groups say Russian troops and Chechnya's pro-Moscow authorities are responsible for the vast majority of the disappearances. Some victims have been released, while others have been found dead, and yet others remain missing.
However, Mr Alkhanov, whose predecessor, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in an attack in May, insisted that the situation in Chechnya was "improving". He quoted official figures saying that 175 people had been reported missing since the start of the year, half the figure for the previous year.
However the figures compiled by non-governmental organizations in Chechnya are much higher, with nearly 300 civilians reported kidnapped this year, according to the respected Russian human rights group, Memorial.
Mr Alkhanov also claimed that a number of people reported missing were in reality fighters whose families sought to disown them. "It happens that a person takes to the forest (to join the guerilla ranks) and that his relatives, to hide the fact that one of their own is part of an armed group, tell the police that he has 'disappeared'," he said.
He charged that a number of "criminals" were "transformed" into missing persons in the process. International bodies have often criticized human rights abuses on both sides of the Chechen war, which started in Oct 1999 when Moscow poured troops into the republic. -AFP
