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TITLE: Russian Troops Killed Four Children, Charity Workers |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: Agence France Presse |
DATE: April 19, 2001 |
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The rebel Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov's spokesman on Wednesday accused Russian soldiers of killing four young children, including relatives of a top rebel official, in eastern Chechnya. Four boys, two of whom are nephews of Maskhadov's vice premier Alsultanov, left their village of Alleroy on Tuesday to herd cows home, and were last seen as soldiers in Russian uniform arrested them, the spokesman said. However, when the boys' relatives demanded their release, Russian army officials denied any knowledge of their whereabouts, the spokesman said. The boys' bodies were found on Wednesday dumped on the outskirts of Alleroy. The children, the eldest of whom was 13 years old, were shot, the spokesman added. Maskhadov urged all human rights groups, both in Russia and abroad, to launch their own investigation of the incident, based on the video and photographic evidence of the fact. In a separate incident, Maskhadov's spokesman charged Russia's security service FSB with killing three local representatives of a charity group in Alkhan-Kala, a few kilometers (miles) away from the capital Grozny. The spokesman did not identify either the group or the names of the victims -- a priest, his driver and a 55-year-old woman. Neither of these reports could be confirmed independently. Several Russian and international rights organizations had accused Russian troops of atrocities committed against civilians in a wave of "disappearances". In a report released to coincide with the UN Human Rights Commission's annual session in Geneva, Human Rights Watch (HRW) cited instances when those detained by Russian soldiers were later found dead, even bearing signs of torture. The New York-based body said it had documented 113 cases of civilians who went missing after arrest by federal forces, mainly males aged from 15 to 49, from December 1999 to last month. END |