Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [143]
Arbi and Adam were arrested. On April 14 their father, Salaudi, went to find out what had happened to his sons and was himself arrested, officially for violation of the curfew. He was released five days later. The brothers were held in the Interior Affairs Office for 17 days.
They were fettered to a chair by their handcuffs and beaten. Various parts of the body, including their fingertips and ears, were subjected to electric shocks; their arms were twisted; they were beaten with rubber truncheons and plastic bottles full of water; they were suffocated using adhesive tape, polythene bags and gas masks; dogs were set upon them; and pieces of skin were torn from them using pliers. Plaintiff No. 1 (Arbi Chitayev) had a gas mask put on his head which was pumped full of cigarette smoke. Plaintiff No. 2 (Adam Chitayev) was brought into a room and told he must confess to being a resistance fighter and taking part in kidnappings. When Plaintiff No. 2 refused to sign the confession, he was gagged with tape and beaten on the back and sexual organs. Simultaneously, another person pointed a rifle at him and threatened to shoot him if he moved.
On April 28 the Chitayevs, along with others detained in the Office, were taken away blindfolded and told that they were going to be shot. In fact they were dropped off at the Chernokozovo pre-trial detention facility where
They were forced to run to an interrogation room, bending down and with their hands on their heads while the guards beat them on the back. In the interrogation room were an iron table and chair and there was a hook on the wall. They were kicked, and beaten with rifle butts and hammers on various parts of the body, concentrating on their kneecaps; straitjackets were put on them which were attached to the hook so that they were hanging from it, and beaten. Their fingers and toes were crushed using hammers and door jambs; their hands and feet were tied together behind their backs (the “sparrow” position) … The detainees were not allowed to pray under threat of further beatings.
The Chitayevs were lucky. They emerged from Chernokozovo in October 2000, having passed through all the circles of hell which are customary there but at least they were alive. They were outraged by their illegal arrest and torture, which made them rare among survivors of Chernokozovo, and this in itself testifies to their firm belief that the Russian regime had no grounds whatsoever for impugning them. The Chitayevs were not and never had been members of the Chechen resistance. It also mattered that they are educated, serious, socially active and progressive. Their indignation took them first to the Russian legal institutions – the Prosecutor’s Office and the courts – and then, when they were unable to raise any interest in their sufferings there, on to Strasbourg. Arbi and Adam Chitayev lodged official complaints, and Arbi took the difficult decision to emigrate from Russia, seeing no possibility of continuing to live in a country where such humiliations were possible. We met him abroad, where he was not enjoying exile and finding it difficult to make a living, but at least feeling safe. Four years on, remembering the details of his months of detention as he looked out of the window at life in Europe, he was shaking as if he had Parkinson’s disease. Adam, however, decided to stay, moved to Siberia, and got a teaching job. In Strasbourg, meanwhile, the case, with the slowness which