March 1, 2000
THERNOKOZOVO, Russia, Feb. 29 -- The heavy steel doors, freshly painted for visitors, swung open one by one along a 100-foot-long corridor to reveal cold cells, gauzy from cigarette smoke and poor ventilation, where the sallow faces of Chechen men and women peered out from the shadows -- their eyes frozen by the flash of intruding cameras.
Their guards barked orders at them to "stand back from the door!" or to "turn around!" or "speak up!" and to report to a group of visitors on the conditions in this notorious "filtration" camp. Some who have passed through here have alleged that brutal beatings and torture have taken place.
Almost in unison, the inmates, their heads covered with shawls or woolen hats against the chill, reported that everything was "normal." They said the Russian administrators of the camp did not beat them, or use electric shocks during interrogations, as had been alleged. Nor, they said, did the Russians poke tear gas through the portals that served as peepholes in steel outer doors that sealed them in the communal cells, where they had spent weeks or months waiting to be released or charged with aiding Chechen fighters.
The Russian military, which has been trying to retake the southern Chechnya region from separatists, guided journalists and European officials through the camp on Monday and today in an effort to refute allegations of brutality and torture that former inmates have made to human rights organizations.
In the military's carefully guided tour, a new field hospital was displayed in the prison courtyard, but there was no one in residence, and it appeared to have been set up in the last few days.
Of 817 detainees who have been processed here, according to Russian military officials, only 99 were still here today. And while the inmates told the visitors, in the presence of guards, that they do not know of incidents of beating and abuse, two important facts emerged today.
First, according to family members gathered outside the gates, hundreds of detainees have been bused out of the camp in recent days. And the inmates said there has been a significant improvement in their treatment since a new detachment of guards and administrators took over early this month, after the reports of brutality emerged.
"I would like to stress that this new administration is much better and that radical changes have taken place after they arrived, and we are very grateful for that," said Makhmail Abu Akhar, a resident of Grozny, the Chechen capital. He has been locked up here for two months after being arrested at a checkpoint when he could not produce his passport.
Standing next to him was a pitiable young man in his 30's named Ruslan who was crying and tugging at his hat. He appeared to be mildly retarded and described himself as an invalid unable to work.
"I want to go home," he sobbed, "but I don't have any documents."
Gen. Mikhail Nazarkin, a senior officer from the Russian Ministry of Justice, told reporters that 80 percent of the inmates who have passed through this prison since last fall were suspected of "participation in illegal armed formations" in Chechnya.
Russian security services have cleared 452 of them thus far, he said, and they have been released. Others, still under suspicion, have been transferred to prisons elsewhere pending action by state prosecutors, he said.
But what was clear from interviews snatched with inmates in a 90-minute tour was that the Russian authorities have cast their net broadly to arrest undocumented Chechen men and others who may have been helping Chechen fighters indirectly by caring for the wounded.
That was apparently the case with Ismail Abu Bakar, a pediatrician by training who said he had been treating wounded civilians, but perhaps also some fighters, over the months of bombardment of Grozny and its environs. He was arrested in the village of Yermolovskaya while helping evacuate a large group of wounded.
"I was providing medical assistance to these people, and it doesn't matter if they are militants or nonmilitants," he said, "I am a physician in the first place. If people are sick, is there any difference between them? But these were mainly peaceful citizens suffering from the bombardment."
Five women stood behind the cell door marked No. 11.
"We would like to know why we are here, and we don't understand the reason," one said.
Another said, "We have no idea how long they are going to keep us here." She said she was arrested as she was catching a ride on a bus loaded with wounded civilians and some fighters.
"They charged that we helped the militants, that we treated their wounds," she said. "But actually, because the Russians lack precision weapons, they were dropping bombs all over the town, and the wounded were mainly civilians."
Some young men here said they were farmers or laborers who had been wrongly detained simply because they fit the profile of Chechens who are supporting the rebels. Several said they were arrested when they returned to Chechnya from their homes in other parts of Russia to rescue aged relatives.
"I work on a commune," said one man. "They claim I was a militant, but they don't have to keep me in here. It would be enough for them to go back to the farm where I was and ask people what I've been doing for the last 10 years. I have been working on the land. I am an agricultural worker."
One former Chernokozovo inmate named Jalil met with investigators from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights after his release this month. He told them that he and many men from his village in the Terek River basin were detained in a sweep on Feb. 4 after eight Russian soldiers were killed nearby. When they reached the prison camp here, he was quoted as saying, they were greeted by guards who said: "Welcome to hell. You will have a slow and cruel death."
Jalil had to prop himself up on pillows when he was interviewed in Ingushetia by Doug Ford, a senior investigator for the physicians' group. Jalil spoke with difficulty at times and said his mind was not clear after being beaten unconscious four times while detained. He said he was released only after his sister raised the 4,000 rubles necessary to buy his freedom.
On both Monday and today, after the official tour of Chernokozovo was completed, the bus carrying journalists from the prison was mobbed by distraught women. Some only suspected that a beloved son or husband was inside and were trying to find out. They pounded their fists on the bus and blocked its way while Russian military escorts barricaded the door from the inside so the journalists could not speak to the women.
Some scrawled messages in the dust on the bus windows. Others reached up and pressed notes into the hands of one journalist hanging out the window. Then guards carrying assault rifles rushed out of the camp and forced the women away from the bus, knocking some of them down.
One of the notes handed in through the window simply said, "Help us."