Chechens 'raped and beaten' in detention camps

By Patrick Cockburn in Nazran, Ingushetia
10 February 2000

Chechen men are being systematically raped, beaten and killed in a Russian-run detention camp in northern Chechnya, according to a letter from a Russian soldier stationed at the camp, which has been obtained by The Independent. "They are literally being killed here," the soldier writes. "One just has to hear the cries of robust healthy guys whose bones are being broken. Some of them are also being raped. They also force some of them to rape another. If there is a 'hell' one can see it here."

The soldier, who signs himself "N", writes that he cannot give his real name "for obvious reasons". He is doing his military service at Chernokozovo camp close to the Terek river in northern Chechnya, he says. The Russian government has confirmed that suspected Chechen rebels are imprisoned at Chernokozovo.

The writer says he feels compelled to speak out "because I cannot stand it when I know this and don't do anything against it". Andrei Babitsky, a Radio Liberty journalist handed over to the Chechens by the Russian security services in exchange for captured Russian soldiers, was held in Chernokozovo, he says. Mr Babitsky was not raped, "but they beat him so badly that his glasses were flying in the air, poor guy".

The letter is dated 3 February and covers three sides of paper. The writer admits that he is not very literate. His shaky grammar appears to indicate that he is a young, poorly educated conscript. The accuracy of his account is underlined by his use of prison slang. Some of his facts can be confirmed. Radio Liberty journalists learnt that Mr Babitsky was in Chernokozovo more than a week ago.

For months, thousands of Chechens, mostly young men, have been detained by the Russians in Chechnya, without anybody being able to find out what has happened to them. Attempts by relatives to contact family members inside Chernokozovo and other prisons have usually failed.

The young soldier reveals to the outside world, for the first time, what is happening inside one of the dreaded "filtration" camps where Russian security says it is separating guerrillas from civilians. It now appears that they are being subjected to punishments of extraordinary brutality. "N" says, as if possessed by a sense of guilt, that he himself could be "numbered among the butchers, though a rank-and-file one". There are some 700 detainees in the camp, but only seven are really suspected of taking part in the war, he says.

Most of those subjected to homosexual rape and beating are in their late teens and have been detained for minor offences such as not having registered their passports or having no passport at all, he says. Others were arrested while smoking a cigarette outside their homes or walking to a neighbouring village or for having a military-style raincoat or belt in their houses..

His account of what is happening inside the camp is all the more convincing because he expresses no sympathy for the seven suspected Chechen fighters. "They are one-half rotten so they deserve it and I don't have compassion for them." He adds that two of the alleged guerrillas were shot.

Homosexual rape is common in Russia's prisons. "It is used as an instrument of humiliation," one former prisoner says. "The guards also call prisoners who have been raped by women's names."

This is the first time, however, that such systematic assault has been reported in Chechnya, a conservative, Islamic society with strict sexual mores. The news that a soldier at Chernokozovo confirms that such methods are being used is likely to provoke a furious reaction among Chechens.

Several times, the writer repeats that the prisoners he has seen have not fought against Russia. In anguish, he writes: "I cannot describe the exotic methods they use to break the human spirit, to turn a human being into an animal."

Local people in the district where Chernokozovo is situated say they have not been able to get into the prison, which they describe as a grim brick building with four visible watch towers. Fatima, a local human rights activist who did not want her family name published, said that women in a market beside the prison "could not bear to listen to the screams of pain coming from inside".

A local civil police commander called Nurdy Ildarov, arrested at the beginning of last month though he had worked for both Chechen and Russian governments, was so badly beaten that "his hands were broken and his backbone damaged", Fatima said. "He died at the end of the month and his family had to buy his body from the Russians." Several badly beaten prisoners have been released but they were told by guards that their families would be killed if they spoke about what had happened to them inside the prison, she said.

"N", whose identity may never be known, said he was "brainwashed to believe that all Chechens were enemies and criminals". Now he realises they are normal people and pleads for somebody to help them.