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TITLE: Chechen Deputy Accuses Russian Troops of Child Killings |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: AFP |
DATE: April 19, 2001 |
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Chechnya's representative in the Russian parliament accused federal troops Thursday of killing three children, including a nine-year-old, and a man found dead in the east of the war-torn republic. The bodies of the boys, aged between nine and 13, and a 43-year-old man, all of whom had been shot in the head, were discovered Wednesday close to Alleroi, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of the Chechen capital Grozny. The Kremlin denounced "a cynical and cruel rebel operation" after Chechnya's breakaway president Aslan Maskhadov accused Russian troops of killing the boys. But Chechen deputy in the State Duma lower house, Aslambek Aslakhanov, pointed the finger at Russian soldiers and said he had already demanded a prosecutors' investigation of the killings. "The inhabitants of Alleroi saw helicopters overhead from the 25th paratroop regiment only hours before the bodies were discovered. They are convinced the paratroopers killed these people," Aslakhanov told AFP. "I am sure that is the case. The genocide of the Chechen people is under way," added the lawmaker elected last August. The four victims came from the same village as Maskhadov's former deputy Lom-Ali Alsultanov but were not his nephews as earlier reports had suggested. The youths had left the village of Alleroi on Tuesday to herd cows home, and were last seen as soldiers in Russian uniform arrested them, a Maskhadov spokesman said. But the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin's top spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, told AFP there were no federal troops near Alleroi so "only the rebels could have committed the murders." "It was an act of intimidation" intended to drive ordinary Chechens into the rebel camp and "to sap people's confidence in the pro-Russian administration in Chechnya," Yastrzhembsky's office said. But Aslakhanov rejected the Russian version of events, saying: "They don't tell the truth about Chechnya. Ethnic cleansing is happening. Soldiers have been given a licence to kill. "They no longer care about leaving witnesses. They just accuse the rebels of everything," he added. The Chechen deputy said the republic's pro-Moscow administrator Akhmad Kadyrov had come to Moscow in the wake of the murders to hold talks with interior and defence ministry officials. A spokesman for Kadyrov confirmed to AFP that the former mufti (Islamic leader) was in Moscow Thursday, without giving further details. END |